/r/biology
A place to discuss all things biology! We welcome people and content from all related fields.
science | askscience | biology |
microbiology | bioinformatics | biochemistry |
evolution |
A place to discuss all things biology! We welcome people and content from all related fields. Feel free to share the latest news, discuss relevant content, show off your latest publication, or ask for help on anything from career choices, to how to get that one finicky assay to finally work.
- no trolling
- no spamming (ie. posting tons to links to the same website).
- no hate speech or bigotry
- no personal attacks
- quality control: posts and comments are subject to removal if they do not fit the sub's purpose.
- no anti-vaxxers or covid-19 deniers
- no memes or ragecomics (they can be posted in /r/labrats)
- no pictures with text overlayed
- no low effort jokes, comedy, puns, etc.
- Health or Medical questions should be submitted to /r/AskDocs.
- Disclaimer: The information provided in the comments section does not, and is not intended to, constitute professional or medical advice; instead, all information, content, and materials available in the comments section are for general informational purposes only.
- simple homework help should be posted to /r/homeworkhelp
- Guidelines for the media
We have self-serve user flair. Pick flair representing your favorite biological field of interest. You don't have to be an expert in it. If you don't have a favorite genre of biology, consider "general biology" or "bio enthusiast". If you want something off-list, you can change the flair text yourself.
Please label your submissions with user flair after submitting them.
/r/biology
Hello!
I am a junior in college (20 M) and I have plans for applying to nursing school. I have a habit of imagining the worst and like to prepare for it. I spoke to my counselor and they said that in the case I don't get in I should simply start working at a hospital and then reapply the following application cycle.
I was wondering what you guys would recommend I do? In terms of a job that I can work for a short while until I reapply and/or just general advice. I feel like im having an existential crisis about my future lol.
I wanted to write a paper on this today but I’m lazy so I’ll post it here instead.
It seems like humans form hierarchical structures just like other species.
For example, in bees we see, they form a colony around their queen.
Or
We see this in gorillas where one silverback leads the group.
So we can infer that humans naturally form hierarchical structure as well.
Which we can literally see. And have evidence
This seems paradoxical to the equality argument. Because even though humans look at themselves as different. We are kind of the same as other species, we just have different characteristics. And form structures naturally as well.
Each person, while may some may be seem different. Have great importance to the structure, because the structure cannot function without its components
The problem with humans I think is that we scale up to high, and competition for resources is scarce making it a zero sum game of winners and losers.
What are your thoughts?
So why isn’t anybody scooping this stuff up and using it for something? We have a giant biomass that’s just going to float around and rot? It just seems like somebody would have thought of a way to make use of it. I also know next to nothing about algae, so maybe it doesn’t have any meaningful utility.
Hi folks, I hope this is allowed here. I didn’t think this counts as “selling goods”, since we are actually giving the books away for free and asking the recipient to cover the cost of postage (media mail). I sincerely apologize if I’ve misunderstood that rule.
My dad is a retired wildlife biologist, in the USA. He’s also a bit of a pack-rat (hah, vertebrate pests were his specialty). There’s a ton of books that he was overwhelmed by, and I have convinced him that there’s another option between “horde forever” and “trash”- some could find new homes. I’ve convinced him to offer them online for essentially the price of shipping, which was an easier sell than taking all the boxes to the library book donations. I know he would feel great about sending them to people who are in his field or who just have a genuine interest.
Topics include biology, ecology, wildlife, pests, conservation, specific animals, study findings, and all kinds of things. Some of these are out of print, some of them have really cool spine or cover designs or fonts or plates, and would make great decor or props in addition to maybe having interesting content inside? The oldest I have seen so far is from the 1940s, though there might be older as we work through more. He got a lot of books from colleagues or professors of his, as well.
I made an Instagram to sell in the comments, so that we can keep adding books in waves as they have time to clean out various storage spaces. We’ll be shipping in the US via Media Mail, so we’ve rounded up to the nearest dollar to cover costs of packaging when we run out. (If you’re international to us and really want something and are willing to cover that shipping, please comment with where in the world you are and we’ll see if we can figure out what the cost would be to ship).
Bob’s Bookshelves on Instagram
Please check it out and follow- maybe we’ll have something you need coming up! Also let me know if you’re looking for something he might have.
I genuinely can't remember the last time my health anxiety was this bad. There's currently a bad cold/cough going around at my family home(I'm testing myself most days) I know that "essentially" I have had the vaccine but the thing is as I had my first and second dose of the vaccine almost two full years ago, would you expect me to have significantly reduced/pretty crap immunity against covid? As I've read that if you had your two vaccines(as in the two standard vaccine doses, not including the additional booster doses) two years/almost two years ago or longer, then your immunity against covid can be as poor as someone who hasnt had covid yet etc. I thought I was kind of strong mentally but I literally can't stop convincing myself that if I have got covid or if I get covid in the next few days, that it will be the start of the "slope" to me dying at a young age(I'm in my early twenties) like mabye I will just start off with a cough but then I'll end up in an ICU bed or passing away in my sleep without getting a chance to even say goodbye to my family, friends, the people at my groups etc. Even people I know who have quite recently had additional covid booster vaccines, they've still had quite intense experiences with covid(very feverish consistently for days at a time, having a bad cough/sore throat almost like a choking cough, being bed bound because of painful muscle aches etc.) And if they have experienced that and they've recently had a booster, then surely I'm even more fucked/even more likely to get seriously ill or have to be hospitalised. It's very hard for me to tell wether I'm being paranoid or if I'm just being cautious.
Where can I buy (presumably dead) fairyfly specimens? I'd like to look at them under a microscope.
My mom has a good point, she said that "look at plants who get indoor sunlight and those who don't" but I wonder if the quality suffers.
I'll ask this in the physics sub too just so I get fun answers about what's happening
Can’t I just wash my hands after handing my paludarium water like normal and be fine?
How is this different from cycling a tank with a piece of raw shrimp?
I know some of the bacteria that decompose meat are Brochotrix thermosphacta, Carnobacterium, Clostridium, Enterobacterium, Leuconostoc, and Pseudomonas. I know the last three can be pathogenic and include E. coli, etc.
Will it threaten my life to have rotting meat in the water of my paludarium?
I'm trying to design a detector to track the Brownian motion of exosomes in liquid suspension with a simple photodetector and lasers, however, I'm not sure what minimum sampling frequency I should use to capture at least some meaningful data. I couldn't find any info on the internet or I'm just not familiar with the terminology.
Of course, it depends on the viscosity of the medium and the excitation signal but I just want to get a general idea
Rough, soft, somewhere in the middle?
I just stumbled upon The "Wow! signal" of the terrestrial genetic code which analyzes the genetic code to find the prime number 37 to be used in interesting ways, besides the fact that DNA is already an interesting code with the 4 nucleotides in pairs with 3 in a row making a codon.
What other sorts of "codes" exist in the various diverse parts of biology? I don't even know where to begin, but my goal is to compile a list of interesting codes used in biology, like how Stephen Wolfram catalogued the various rules for generating some cellular automata. But perhaps there is more related to sexual reproduction at the cellular level, or other codes to do with molecules or cellular signaling pathways, I dunno. Curious what you know of.
This is not meant to be a hot topic or anything. After what I’ve learned about biology and neuroscience(which at the end of the day is very rudimentary) I’ve come to an understanding that humans are not really separated from animals. We may have technology and things or the sort, but I have many arguments as to why we are still just tech-savvy apes. For starters the humans biggest advantage isn’t language, intelligence, or tool use. It is the ability to write down the information for later generations and the continuing of said knowledge. Many other animals are arguably more intelligent, dexterous, or even emotional. While I agree we have separated ourselves from the animal kingdom in a technological sense and that because of that we have, in a sense, guided our own evolution. Is there anything biologically speaking that has made us so unique from the animal kingdom, or have we as a species just been incredibly lucky to have had so many genetic traits and line up in a way to make us such a dominant species. I’ve always been a bit biased in the sense that I believe we were a lucky species, with a lucky evolutionary history in addition to a lucky cultural development, but I was wondering if there was a better explanation than a statistical anomaly, or if we are just a very specific niche that will eventually fade?
Which would mean if new strands were formed, the sag would go away?
I have read a few articles and watched a lot of videos and they all seem to be parroting a base source where apparently when monks were studied they were able to reduce their metabolism by 64%, steam all of the moisture out of cold wet towels (they all used the word steam by the way), and increase body temperature by 17 degrees (which to me contradicts the steam claim since water boils at 212F (100C), and the claim of reduced metabolism since that would suggest their body temperature would decrease but I know in the mountains water boils at a lower temperature so maybe that's where the experiment took place, but sometimes they're measuring core body temperatures, sometimes it's just fingers and toes, sometimes it's in a Harvard lab and sometimes it's in the mountains of Tibet). I've heard Wim Hof tried to run a marathon in the arctic using this technique but never finished because of a foot injury and I'm skeptical of that because for one I don't know how you practice controlled meditative breathing while you run and two not to speak ill of an injury but that sounds a bit "convenient" to me. A guy claiming this technique gives you super powers and then he injured his foot and never finished the challenge?
I'm totally fine with accepting that mindfulness is helpful for relaxing and ignoring intrusive thoughts but this seems kind of too mystical. I've listened to Sadhguru on JRE talking about meditation and then all of a sudden the conversation turned to alians in the mountains and that close encounters movie by Steven Spielberg being based on true events. I've heard people claim that Tibetan monks can set things on fire just using their hands. I've also heard of the 200 year old preserved body that's not dead, he's just meditating still.
And every time I look into meditation techniques they're never consistent. I even looked into tummo specifically. My AP Psychology teacher knew nothing about it, some sources on Google and YouTube say it's about visualization of the warmth flowing from your spine, others are just breathing techniques with no visualization at all. And I feel like if this is a real scientifically verifiable phenomenon why isn't everyone doing it, why isn't everyone a super hero blasting heat from their fingers and taking cold baths in -32C (-25.6F) weather. If meditating can make you live for 200 years why aren't more people doing it? Wouldn't it be so amazing if poor and impoverished people could slow metabolism by 64% to streatch their energy over a longer time and not starve to death?
So all of this to say is there anything scientific about these claims, does the feild of biology actually recognize a way you can sit shirtless in the mountains for several hours and not freeze to death or is this some sort of smoke and mirrors scheme I haven't seen anyone call out yet?
I can't find much information on this but when looking up the codon for selenocysteine I noticed that it was a stop codon (UGA). How does this work?
Sorry if this is not allowed here. I will delete if so.
But I’m looking for YouTube channels about Biology.
Any suggestions?
If yes, can it be reversed?
Why is it necessary for us to breath in oxygen and breath carbon dioxide? Where are oxygen and carbon dioxide involved as reactants? And where does the food we ate play into this pathway?