B6: Global challenges – GCSE OCR Foundation Biology revision notes

What this topic covers

B6: Global challenges has 3 subtopics:

• B6.1 Monitoring and maintaining the environment
• B6.2 Feeding the human race
• B6.3 Monitoring and maintaining health

B6: Global challenges lessons by subtopic

51 lessons, grouped by subtopic.

B6.1 Monitoring and maintaining the environment

• What is Biodiversity and Why Does it Matter?: Explore the definition of biodiversity and understand how it provides stability to ecosystems by reducing species dependence on one another.
• Human Impact on Biodiversity: Investigate how human activities are reducing biodiversity and why maintaining biodiversity is crucial for the future of our species.
• Types and Sources of Pollution: Explore the different types of pollution that occur in water, air, and on land, examining specific sources like sewage, fertilisers, toxic chemicals, smoke, acidic gases, and landfill waste.
• Human Impact on Pollution and Biodiversity: Investigate how rapid population growth and increased living standards lead to greater resource use and waste production, and examine how pollution affects biodiversity by killing plants and animals.
• How Human Activities Reduce Land for Wildlife: Explore how building, quarrying, farming and waste dumping reduce available land for plants and animals, and examine the specific impact of peat bog destruction on biodiversity and carbon release.
• Causes of Large-Scale Deforestation: Explore the main drivers of deforestation in tropical areas, focusing on agriculture for cattle ranching and rice cultivation, and the growing demand for biofuel crops.
• Understanding Global Warming and Its Biological Impact: Explore how increasing levels of carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere contribute to global warming, and examine the various biological consequences this has on living organisms and ecosystems worldwide.
• Human Impacts on Biodiversity: Explore how human activities can both positively and negatively affect biodiversity in ecosystems, understanding the range of impacts humans have on the natural world.
• Conservation Programmes and Habitat Protection: Learn about conservation efforts including breeding programmes for endangered species, protection of rare habitats, and the importance of field margins and hedgerows in agriculture.
• Global and Local Environmental Solutions: Examine government initiatives to reduce deforestation and carbon emissions, plus the role of recycling in maintaining biodiversity and reducing environmental impact.

B6.2 Feeding the human race

• What is Selective Breeding and How Does it Work?: Understand the process of selective breeding and learn about examples including disease-resistant crops, high-yield animals, gentle dogs, and decorative flowers.
• The Impact and Problems of Selective Breeding: Explore the benefits and drawbacks of selective breeding, including its impact on food production and the problems of inbreeding in domesticated animals.
• The Process of Genetic Engineering: Learn what genetic engineering is and how genes are isolated, inserted into vectors, and transferred to cells. Understand the main steps in the genetic engineering process and how organisms develop with desired characteristics.
• Applications of Genetic Engineering: Explore real-world uses of genetic engineering including GM crops with improved disease resistance and yields, and bacteria engineered to produce human insulin. Discover how genetic modification could help treat inherited disorders.
• Benefits, Risks and Ethics of Genetic Engineering: Evaluate the potential benefits and risks of genetic engineering in agriculture and medicine. Examine concerns about GM crops' effects on wildlife and human health, and understand why some people object to genetic modification.
• Animal Cloning Techniques: Learn about nuclear transfer cloning and embryo transplants - two methods used to create genetically identical animals.
• Plant Cloning Methods: Explore tissue culture and cuttings - two techniques used to produce identical plants for commercial and conservation purposes.
• Declining Fish Stocks and Their Conservation: Explore why fish stocks in the oceans are declining and understand the importance of maintaining fish populations at sustainable levels to prevent species disappearance. Examine how conservation methods like controlling net sizes and fishing quotas help maintain fish stocks at sustainable levels.

B6.3 Monitoring and maintaining health

• What are stem cells and where are they found?: Learn about the definition and characteristics of stem cells, and explore where they are found in embryos, adult animals, and plants. Understand how stem cells can differentiate into specialized cell types.
• Medical uses and applications of stem cells: Explore how stem cells can be used in medicine to treat conditions like diabetes and paralysis. Learn about therapeutic cloning and understand the potential risks and ethical considerations surrounding stem cell use.
• Stem cells in agriculture and conservation: Discover how stem cells are used to clone plants for agriculture and conservation purposes. Learn about cloning rare species for protection and producing crops with special features like disease resistance.
• Understanding Coronary Heart Disease and Its Treatments: Learn how fatty material builds up in coronary arteries causing heart disease, and explore how stents and statins are used as treatments.
• Heart Valve Problems and Heart Failure Solutions: Discover the consequences of faulty heart valves and how they can be replaced, plus understand heart transplants and artificial hearts for heart failure.
• Evaluating Cardiovascular Disease Treatments: Compare and evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of drugs, mechanical devices and transplants for treating cardiovascular diseases.
• Understanding Health and Disease Interactions: Explore what health means and how different types of diseases can interact with each other, including the effects of immune system defects, viral triggers for cancer, and the relationship between physical and mental health.
• Immune System Problems and Allergic Reactions: Investigate how immune system defects increase susceptibility to infections and how immune reactions can trigger allergies like skin rashes and asthma.
• Analysing Disease Data and Epidemiology: Learn to interpret disease incidence data using graphs, charts, and statistical methods, and understand the principles of sampling in epidemiological studies.
• Risk Factors and Lifestyle Effects on Health (Part 1/2): Explore how lifestyle factors like diet, smoking, alcohol and exercise affect non-communicable diseases, understanding risk factors and their mechanisms
• Risk Factors and Lifestyle Effects on Health (Part 2/2): Explore how lifestyle factors like diet, smoking, alcohol and exercise affect non-communicable diseases, understanding risk factors and their mechanisms
• The Impact and Data Analysis of Non-Communicable Diseases: Examine the human and financial costs of non-communicable diseases and learn to analyze scientific data using graphs, charts and correlation patterns
• Understanding Cancer and Tumour Types: Learn what cancer is and explore the differences between benign and malignant tumours, including how they behave and spread in the body.
• Cancer Risk Factors: Investigate the lifestyle and genetic factors that can increase the risk of developing different types of cancer.
• Types of Pathogens and How They Spread: Learn about the four main types of pathogens (viruses, bacteria, protists and fungi) and understand how infectious diseases spread through direct contact, water and air in both animals and plants.
• How Pathogens Cause Disease: Explore how bacteria and viruses reproduce rapidly in the body, how bacteria produce toxins that damage tissues, and how viruses live inside cells causing cell damage.
• Preventing the Spread of Disease: Discover the methods used to reduce or prevent the spread of infectious diseases in both humans and other organisms.
• Common Viral Diseases: Explore three important viral diseases: measles affecting humans with fever and rash symptoms, HIV/AIDS and its impact on the immune system, and tobacco mosaic virus affecting plant photosynthesis. Learn about transmission methods, symptoms, and prevention strategies for each viral pathogen.
• Food Poisoning - Salmonella Infection: Explore how Salmonella bacteria cause food poisoning through contaminated food, examining the symptoms, transmission methods, and prevention strategies including vaccination of poultry in the UK.
• Sexually Transmitted Infections - Gonorrhoea: Investigate gonorrhoea as a bacterial STD, covering its symptoms, transmission through sexual contact, antibiotic resistance issues, and prevention methods including barrier contraception.
• Rose Black Spot Disease: Learn about rose black spot as a fungal disease, including its symptoms (purple/black spots on leaves), effects on plant growth through reduced photosynthesis, methods of transmission (water and wind), and treatment options using fungicides or removing affected leaves.
• Malaria: A Protist Disease: Students explore malaria as a disease caused by protist pathogens, examining the complex life cycle involving mosquitoes as vectors, understanding the symptoms including recurrent fever episodes and potential fatality, and investigating prevention methods including controlling mosquito breeding and using protective nets.
• Physical Barriers Against Pathogens: Learn how the skin, nose, trachea, bronchi and stomach act as the first line of defence to prevent pathogens from entering the body.
• The Immune System Response: Understand how white blood cells defend the body through phagocytosis, antibody production and antitoxin production when pathogens enter the body.
• How Vaccination Works: Learn how vaccines work by introducing inactive pathogens to stimulate white blood cell production of antibodies, and understand how the immune system responds quickly to prevent infection upon re-exposure to the same pathogen.
• Individual and Population Protection Through Vaccination: Explore how vaccination prevents illness in individuals and understand how immunising large portions of the population reduces the spread of pathogens through the community.
• How Antibiotics Work and Their Limitations: Learn how antibiotics like penicillin kill bacterial infections, why specific antibiotics target specific bacteria, and understand why antibiotics cannot treat viral diseases. Explore the growing concern of antibiotic-resistant bacteria.
• Treating Symptoms vs Killing Pathogens: Understand the difference between painkillers that treat symptoms and medicines that kill pathogens. Discover why it's so challenging to develop effective antiviral drugs without harming healthy body tissues.
• Sources of medicines and their discovery: Learn about how medicines are traditionally sourced from plants and microorganisms, including famous examples like digitalis from foxgloves, aspirin from willow, and Fleming's discovery of penicillin. Explore how modern drug development combines traditional sources with synthetic chemistry.
• Testing new medicines: from laboratory to clinic: Understand the rigorous process of drug development including preclinical testing using cells, tissues and animals, followed by clinical trials with healthy volunteers and patients. Learn why extensive testing for toxicity, efficacy and dose is essential before medicines reach the public.
• Clinical trials and finding the right dose: Explore how clinical trials work, including why very low doses are used initially, how optimal doses are determined through further trials, and the importance of double-blind trials using placebos to ensure reliable results.
• How Antibiotic Resistance Develops: Learn how bacterial evolution and mutations lead to antibiotic-resistant strains, including the role of rapid reproduction and natural selection in creating superbugs like MRSA.
• Preventing Antibiotic Resistance: Explore strategies to reduce antibiotic resistance including appropriate prescribing by doctors, completing antibiotic courses, and restricting agricultural use, plus the challenges of developing new antibiotics.

More in this course

Go back to the full GCSE OCR Foundation Biology topic list, or practise this topic with past-paper questions.