[USA] My daughter is starting what will be 2 years of community college before she goes to school to complete a 4-year degree. Her current plan is a BS in Biology and she's mentioned Molecular Biology as a career path. Now, she's just starting so likely all that may change, but regardless I dod some poking around about job prospects in that field and was dismayed. Low job prospects, low salary, low satisfaction, etc.

My daughter's fascination with Biology started her Junior year but has been persistent since then. She requested and received a nice binocular microscope for her graduation present. She loves doing labs in AP Bio and I can see how the hands on lab work inspires her to do the less fun work. She's whip-smart and if she can maintain motivation, the sky is the limit!

I know nothing about the work or field of biology. If you had a kid starting school today who was unlikely to listen to a suggestion for a non-biology path, what would you recommend?

I like my food spicy and hot. So any food with less variety of spices in it just seems bland to me. One day I saw how the Germans eat their potatoes and the no-spice of it was killing me. But I can't forget that Germans might consider it heavenly. Another thing is that, no matter your origins, everyone has this liking for junk food, my question is why is it so ? Why we evolved like this ? What if we didn't?

Context

The skin of a "Dragon Eye"/Longan fruit is a dull brown, and while it most definitely isn't the only fruit to have this color scheme (e.g. coconuts and kiwis), the fact that many other fruits are often a bright vibrant color (e.g. apple red, watermelon green, peach pink, plum purple, grape purple and green), especially popular domesticated fruits, many of which even had their bright colors even before domestication (although some like coconuts and kiwis didn't) to attract animals to disperse their seeds makes me wonder: how and why did Longan end up with a dull brown color?

Current Knowledge

From what I've seen it looks like the dull color might've started with the Dimocarpus genus, but I haven't been able to check the fruits of even a majority of the species under it since there aren't many pictures of the plants themselves and even less of the fruit so I can't say for sure, but the Sapindaceae family definitely has colorful fruit (e.g. rambutan, ackee, lychee) so it doesn't seem to have emerged at the family level or above.

As for the use of color itself, it could be camouflage, protection from sunlight, a byproduct of natural or artificial (assuming that the Dimocarpus genus didn't pass down the color and it was human domestication and breeding that did) selection for something else, or something else entirely. I have no idea, but maybe someone who actually farms them would have a better idea.

Question

So at what point in the Longan's evolutionary history did an ancestor of, or the Longan itself evolve its dull brown and how did its natural or artificial selection process end up selecting for that?

Also, if you think that we can't be sure at all could you please still say your best guess (mark it as a guess ofc)

I've heard about hyenas, is it true? Are there more? Is it as uncommon as I think it is or is it simply that I do not know?

Lots of kida random questions XD

How do we know if we have damaged any of our photoreceptors from looking directly at the sun by accident in our everyday lives such as when driving for example? Also do photoreceptors sustain temporary damage or just permanent damage from bright light? They say the retina cells are fragile but just how fragile are they?

Hi I'm interested in pursuing a career in biology, mainly ecology or wildlife biology (something that allows you to go out in the field). I'm currently studying for my Bachelor's and would like to get a Masters. However I do have some questions about some things I heard online.

How much do you get paid if you have a Masters degree? Is it enough to live on your own (I live in California)?

How competitive is it? Is it easy to find a job after graduating with a Masters?

Do you have to travel a lot? This isn't a problem for me because I would like to visit other parts of the world, I was just curious.

Just curious on the post-grad opportunities for education in Genetics, specifically to work in some sort of genetics engineering facet. Has anyone taken this route? Successful or not?

I wonder why is that girls "mature" faster than boys? They tend to experience secondary sexual characteristics development a couple of years earlier than their male counterparts.

So I have several potted flowers in my back yard. With us being the middle of a heat wave, they’ve been needing lots of water lately. I recently noticed that a mother quail had made a nest in one of my hanging pots (never seen this before, these pots are ~2 meters off the ground). Unfortunately, I didn’t put two and two together that she was nesting in there until after I had completely doused her nest and eggs a couple of days in a row. I know, I’m an idiot.

My question is: have I done irreparable harm to her eggs? I can’t imagine they would have been submerged for longer than 2 minutes or so, as these hanging pots drain quite quickly. But I know that in some animals even brief contact with water can render eggs no longer viable. Google was unhelpful in answering this, so I thought I’d ask here.

I was picking berries in the garden and had to contend with quite a few snails who were also trying to get their share.

That go me thinking and I came up with a question which I couldn’t find an answer to: why are snails so slow? What evolutionary benefit does it serve to be so slow?

I thought that it’s probably a metabolism thing but I would love to get a proper answer.

EDIT: It would seem that my question was rather dumb and I should have been able to figured out on my own that there is no selective pressure for the snail to be any faster as their food isn’t running away from them and they won’t outrun their predator anyway.

Big thanks to everyone who bothered to answer!

If all life on earth is part of the same 'branch' leading back to the first organism, is it generally accepted that this event has only ever occurred once and is exceedingly rare? Or is it thought that abiogenesis is more common in nature but the resulting life is either difficult to detect or goes extinct too quickly? It just seems so lucky that abiogenesis occurred so early in Earth's timeline if its such a rare occurrence. I think it would be super cool to find a totally separate branch of life that has completely different properties and behaviours.

I have been using specs for 2.5 years now. My left eye is totally fine but right has a very poor vision, when I got my eyesight checked around 2.5 years ago, my right eye's vision was -3.0, so I was just wondering why couldn't we regain our full eyesight our it gets poor?

The traditional way of defining a species is "a group of organisms capable of reproducing within itself and creating fertile offspring as a result, but not with other groups". Is this still widely used?

I've heard it's bad for your hormones levels, I'm pretty concerned since I go to the gym and I'm willing to build muscle mass and hormones are essential for that.

How can a virus be known it was synthetically made or bioengineered?

Thank you for all the suggestions. Chance favored me. I found a recent (2021) BS in Biology from the village who was thrilled to take on the responsibility. I gave him your suggestions. He laughed when I told him Cell Biology was treating me. It looked so innocent in the first level course. I could draw a pretty picture after all. (smile) His blew me away, and he drew his from memory!

I forgot about this request until a rude Reddit child insulted me. Again, thank you for helping my village. We didn't make it to the quarter finals, but we put in a good showing.

Exercise. Starting from a molecule of dna, what's the ratio between original dna and total dna at the second generation?

The solution is 1/4

Since dna duplication is semiconservative, at the first generation 1 mother molecule produces 2 molecules. Each molecule has conserved a dna strand from the mother.

At the second generation every first generation molecule produce a molecule that inherit the dna strand from the mother and one that doesn't.

So I have 4 molecules where 2 have the original dna strand. The ratio in 2/4=1/2.

Where is the blunder?

Anyone care to discuss? Just thinking about moving more north (in US) to hedge my bets for climate change. Was planning to just build a couple large hoophouses for hot weather crops, but then it occurred to me that the sun's path won't change. So, how will that affect crops like onions and others that depends on day length cues for growth?

I'm currently early (taking my first classes) in my BS in biology program. Minoring in criminology. Going into the forensic science field. I wish I can find some kind of employment before graduation. In central Texas area.

What kind of employment have you had that is related to biology?

For context, I graduated with a bachelor's degree in Biology back in 2019 and then joined the US Army the following year. I currently work as an optometry technician and I enjoy interacting with patients. However, I came to realize that I'd love to pursue a more research oriented career and that going back to school is probably the best course of action given that I've been away from academia for almost 5 years now.

I am particularly interested in molecular biology and it's applications on cancer pathogenesis and infectious diseases.

Is it a good idea to pursue a Master's degree first and then apply to a PhD program? If so, what type of programs I should be looking into?

Please let me know your opinion

Thanks!

As someone who often gets sinusitis. Can we once and for all settle if the colour of your snot depends on the type of infection you have - green for bacterial infection. I thought it was agreed the colour is useless to define the pathogen, but recently saw a doctor who still thinks antibiotics should be prescribed if you have green snot.

For all of you who are in academia, how do you handle being excluded from the by line on a journal article that you had significant work in collecting the data for? I am a rising senior in my university and have just found out that the lab I used to work with (it was at a different campus in the university because that campus is only for the first two years) published a paper earlier this year and a lot of the authors were friends that I worked with during my time with the lab (same year as me). My name was not included, but I guess it's okay because in the acknowledgments, it said "We thank all the members of the [PI's Name] lab, and especially [Not me], for thoughtful discussion and practical support of this project." I was not even informed that they were submitting a paper. Can I still point to this paper in my graduate school application even though my name does not appear anywhere in the paper?

I was already annoyed because a poster on the same research also did not have my name with the authors (with my name actually mentioned in the acknowledgement), but the PI told me this was because the poster was for a specific program the college offers and I was not in it (limited spots), so I was satisfied with being thanked in the acknowledgements.

Good news though is that the lab I am now with has already submitted an abstract with me as one of the authors, so at least I can have something tangible to point to in my graduate school applications, and I will be doing an honors thesis with this lab.

If I am coming across as an entitled undergrad who wants authorship on a paper for merely being in the lab when the work is done, I apologize, but seeing my friends from the lab have a published article when I was left out feels really bad. I am happy for them though.

So according to the Theory of Evolution, billions and billions of years ago in some primordial soup or some deep sea volcano a single living cell formed via unknown processes and that cell multiplied and multiplied and grew into all the life that exists on Earth, right? And that cell is the universal last common ancestor or something right. But in the time that that first cell was forming and dividing is it possible that another cell formed in the same way, giving us two different common ancestors? Beyond this, is it possible that new cells never stopped forming? Like somewhere once in a million or billion years a new cell forms creating a whole other tree of life?

Edit: yes I know the theory of evolution isn’t technically what says this that’s mb abiogenesis was not a word taught to us in my hs freshman bio class. (I feel it important to mention that I am by no means someone with an in-depth understanding of biology, and also I am nearly the furthest thing from an evolution skeptic there is)

I’ll be attending The Ohio State University in the fall! I’m really passionate about going to dental school and I have career aspirations in oral and maxillofacial surgery (OMFS)! On my parent's end, there was a concern that I may be left with an “unreliable/unpredictable” biology degree; in the case that I didn’t decide to attend dental school. If that plan fell through then be left with a degree that doesn’t promise a high-paying job or consistent employment. As someone who is still interested in STEAM, I saw biomedical engineering as an opportunity to earn a degree that provides a greater sense of security in regard to finding a career and generating a comfortable income! Despite this, many people have turned me away from BME. They suggest that BME is increasingly more rigorous and demanding than biology, if my intentions are to go to dental school! Is biomedical engineering a waste, when biology is much more straightforward? Can you still make an excellent GPA, while getting potential clinical experience, and doing DAT preparation while doing BME? I would consider myself someone who is very motivated with plenty of resolve and follow-through. I've earned a 4.226 GPA, and I've taken a combined 14+ AP and honors courses (all STEAM related), with medium strength/strong ECs in HS! At the moment, I'm working as a Dental assistant/intern! I’m just looking for a little guidance on what’s going to set me up for success! I really want to attend a T15 dental school or higher (preferably U of M). What's the smart move to get a good GPA and study for that DAT exam! I don’t wanna bite off more than I can chew. If any BME students are out there, dental students, past students, etc! Please help me out! Is biology really the easier path? Thank you all so much! 😊🌸💕

Hey, I'm a high school student selecting subjects for next year. I'm interested in biology, and I'm thinking research in physiology (something along those lines) as my future career. I'm trying to choose physics as one of my subjects (I did chem for the past 2 years so I don't have to take it again), but my counselor is saying that I shouldn't choose it because it's the hardest subject and I have no experience with it. I already got a good score in chem which is enough for uni applications, so in this case, physics is more like an additional subject I can take instead of language. In this case, I'm taking it because I think it will be useful for me in the future and I have redundancy in terms of grade from chem. Should I insist on taking physics? I know it's very hard, but will it be helpful for the future? (If I don't take it now I'll be entering uni with 0 knowledge in physics.)

I am frustrated since most jobs still require extra certifications to work. I want to become a lab researcher in order to bypass hospitals and most of the medical field. I have done two apprenticeships at uni for professors in the neuroscience labs. What am I missing here to get an entry-level job in research, neuroscience preferred?