I am looking to do an Entomology PHD, Ideally in pest or disease vector control. While I am going to apply to do one in 2007, I think I will probably not get a studentship, so will opt to do a masters in Biology of Parasites and Disease Vectors (At Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine). Is anyone working in a similar area that could give me some advice?

Are there many Insect-based PHD's available? When I have looked through on this website, they have been very limited, but I thought (hoped) that it may be the time of year.

Are there many opportunities in this area after a PHD. Looking around, there seems to be a fair bit on offer in Oz or in the states, but I'd rather work based in Britain or Europe (though I am keen to travel for spells).

I am still at a fairly early desision making stage, so I may choose to do something quite different if I foresee a lack of opportunity in the roads ahead. Any advice would be greatly lapped up.

It is hard for an intellegent athiest (like myself ;) )to understand how another intellegent human, with the same access to information, literature etc. could "get sucked in" by religion. From what I've noticed, however, I don't think there is any relationship between intellegence and religion. Strange.

To be honest, all I've done is had a brief look at a few university websites, and tried to hunt out a US equivalent to this website, which doesn't seem to exist. I'm not sure I want to go over the pond anyway, just something to think about on a slow, dragging afternoon. I thought I might speculatively ask on here, in case others had looked into it, in order to save time. I'll check out the embassay though.- good idea.

First off, I know this is probably an annoying question, and one that, with a bit of effort, I would be able to find the answers to elsewhere, but I thought I'd ask anyway, in case anyone is clued up. If anyone is offended by the inanity of the question, please just ignore it rather than calling me a lazy, good for nothing loser, who if incapable of finding the answers himself, is thinking about the wrong thing....anyway:

Does anyone know how easy it is to get funding to do a PHD at a US university? (In a biology-related subject, as a brit) Obviously I know it isn't "easy"; what I mean is: is it virtually impossible, or is it something worth looking into?

The worlds gone "PC mad". Of course a doctorate is "better" than a career packing chickens. Thats not to say that these chicken packers aren't extraordinarily interesting people. A lot of people don't choose to live their life through their career.

Call me a snob, but I think everyone (apart from some freaks) would rather do a PHD than lead that kind of 'poultry' existence. Zara, my advice is to try harder to make friends with these detestable paupers and you may find them suprisingly unique, with individual charm. Not everyone is as pathetically worthless as they first appear.

Thats brilliant. I've never heard of Belford before.

Reasons students choose Belford over other universitys; number 1 on the list:

Belford provide a gold plated seal on the certificate, compared to other universities only providing a coloured printout!

Somalia, Sudan, Ivory Coast etc. are wars that are independent of Europe & America. Whether or not we could step in and actually improve the situations is arguable. I believe the government have condemned what has happened in each of these places. (I'm not too clued up on this though, I must admit)

The trouble in the middle east is directly connected to Britain, Europe and America. Our meddling & pillaging, plus America's heavy sponsoring of Israel military puts us in a position of responsibility. How can we "stand shoulder to shoulder" with a country that happily provides weapons used to commit war crimes?

Its good to exercise your democratic rights, and put pressure on the government to behave responsibly in its international relations. Sadly, I think the issue is so complex that a mass rally is going to suffer from carrying a confused message (even if the "official message" of the protest is well defined). For example, there will likely be muslim fundamentalits there that are anti-isreal and anti-west, but not adverse to war per-se. There will be others there that will be anti-war pacifists, there will be others wanting to free palastine. I don't know if bringing so many contradicory ideologies under one bannner will actually help much.

Regardless of the presence of Loyalist Paramilitaries in Northern Ireland, the fact remains that a terrorist organisation that planned and executed operations, against civilians and infrastructure in England was harboured by Catholic communities in Northern Ireland. The idea of bombing large swathes of Northern Ireland in response, however, seems completely absurd. (or even bombing the east coast of the USA where much of the funding for the IRA came)

I don't see how the presence of Loyalist paramilitaries makes the situation much different. I imagine there are Israeli paramilitary groups amongst the illegal settlers. As I said, a sponsored state has a high level of accountability to the international community (Ireland/Britain) whereas a terrorist group does not (Hezbollah/IRA), therefore going on a rally to protest against the actions of a foreign terrorist group is pointless. Going on a rally to protest against the actions of a country who our elected government should have a dregree of influence is not so futile.

But the majority of the people suffering ARE innocent victims. You can talk about being even handed, but it is not an even situation. On one hand are terrorists and on the other is a sovereign state with a highly sponsored military. In other words, one is accountable to the international community, and can be, to a certain extent, influenced by decisions made by Bush/Blair etc. The other side cannot. As for the communities under fire being "harbourers" of terrorists, well why did we not, as Ali G suggested, carpet bomb northern Ireland? And if we did, would you attribute "equal blame to both sides?"

I see, thats encouraging to hear. Pretty much what I was hoping someone would say to reassure me!

I have already started my honours project, and my supervisor is confident that I have a decent chance of getting it published. The problem is that it is in an area that I have little interest in persuing at Phd level. Would perspective Phd supervisors look at a published piece of work in a fairly unrelated field, simply as proof that I can do research, or will they say it has little relevance?

Thanks for the info, guys. I knew that a JMU degree would be inferior 'like-for-like' with a red-brick, I just wondered how much. Thanks for your inputs.

Now, this is possibly the wrong forum to post this in, but I may have to do a masters. I notice that masters in Bioinfrmatics/quantitative genetics seem to have studentships at a lot of institutions. Anyone know how competitive they are to get (ie if I can't get on a PHD, does that mean I probably wont get a masters studentship as well?)

I have emailed a couple of institutions, but they seem very cagey and keep their cards pretty close to their chest.

"I'd push for a 1st", vis-a-vis, John Moores is not held in particularly high esteem? I'm pretty confident of getting a 1st, but I still worry about where that puts me amongst the competition. For example, is a 1st from John Moores equivalent to a 2(i) from Liverpool?

I'm at John Moores. Apparently its got a good rep for a former-poly, but I bet they all say that!