Malacology Malacology Malacology is the branch of invertebrate zoology that deals with the study of the Mollusca (mollusks or molluscs), the second-largest phylum of animals in terms of described species after the arthropods. Mollusks include snails and slugs, clams, octopus and squid, and numerous other kinds, many of which have shells. One division of malacology, conchology, is devoted to the study of mollusk shells. Malacology derives from Greek , "malakos", "soft"; and , "-logia". Fields within malacological research include taxonomy, ecology and evolution. Applied malacology studies medical, veterinary, and agricultural applications, for example mollusks as vectors of disease, as in schistosomiasis.
Science and technology in the Soviet Union ministries. The core of fundamental science was the USSR Academy of Sciences, originally set up in 1925 and moved from Leningrad to Moscow in 1934. It consisted of 250 research institutes and 60,500 full-time researchers in 1987, a large percentage in the natural sciences such as biology. All of the union's republics except the RSFSR had their own republican academies of science, while the Urals, Siberian, and Far Eastern regional branches of the academy coordinated fundamental science in Eastern Russia. Medical research was coordinated by the USSR Academy of Medical Sciences (), which after 1992 was reorganized into the Russian