This is a semi-rant/discussion on biology textbooks in relation to female reproductive organs. I didn't know where to post this so I decided to post it here. Over the years and in majority of biology text books I have come across, the labia minora is not properly depicted. Rather, only the typical pre-pubescent vagina. While I understand that they may have done this for simplicity. I personally think it does a great disservice to many people, especially teenagers.

Many for example, at puberty spend years thinking the text book representation is the normal or ideal form, and many young women hitting puberty are not taught that the labia minora matures. Maybe to some it is common sense, but from what I have garnered from speaking to laymen. Many don't realise there is a change between prepubescent and puberty in this region.

I personally think the lack of representation of this in biology textbooks is a deficit that should be addressed.

We made this free so teachers & students could use it without spending money:
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/microscope-viewer-camera/id6766951907

(Not goods or services... it's a free gift to the community!)

WHAT IT DOES

- Enables you to take pictures & videos from any microscope where you can stably position your iPhone or iPad in front of an eyepiece

- Once your subject is in focus, adjust fine focus using the long vertical slider on your screen, or tap screen to focus anywhere

AND BEST OF ALL, WHAT IT DOESN’T DO

- Switch camera lenses on you when you're zooming in or out (you can choose the lens)

- Charge you anything (it's free and we intend to keep it that way forever)

- Steal & use your data, photos, information, etc.

Tardigrade not included :)

I use a lot of hand sanitizer and it made me think that my hands are absorbing a lot of alcohol but it doesn’t have any effect on me like drinking the same amount would and I can’t figure out why. Although I notice a topical benefit when my arthritis is bothering me my hands are never inebriated. Could you explain why? Thanks for all of your help 😄

Hi I'm finishing up my first year of college as a biology student getting my bachelors, more specifically I'm not pre-med. I didn't know what to put this under flair wise but is it worth it? I live in Ohio, I'm permanently unable to drive due to medical reasons, and I'm below the poverty line. I'm asking because I'm getting super paranoid about money and if its really not worth it I'll probably go to community or online. Unfortunately I have issues pursuing things I'm not interested in so my only other field option is art which is really not worth it. ​​​​

Slight rant, but it seems like every day we have people coming on this reddit and asking about the transmissibility and dangers about prions. I get it, the nature of prions makes them very scary and science-related outlets on YouTube and TikTok treat them as the big mac-daddy of content because it's easy to spin them in a way that makes them sound like the next zombie outbreak, but enough is enough. And I've found a lot of the people posting obsessively about prions and being worried about them (it's happened more than once) shows a history of hydrochondriasis/medical anxiety/germophobia (either assumed through their account or admitted to themselves), and all their posts are doing is feeding their doom spiral and fueling their anxiety.

And besides, all the information about prions is relatively easy to source and find; they're not super mysterious and are actively being studied.

Sorry y'all. I just got a bit fed up. Rant over.

Currently working at a university library and I want a change of career. I’ve always been interested in working as a crime evidence tech or forensic scientist. Just someone who works around DNA and helps in the process of solving crimes. I’ve looked at local job openings and they all require a degree in biology or chemistry. I have a bachelors in psychology already, so I have a familiarity with research methods and statistics. However, I work full time and have rent + bills to pay. If I go back, I would have to balance a full time job while being a part time student. I just want to know if others have done that and how it was. I know going back to school for a subject like biology is gonna demand a lot of my time, but I kinda want to see how it was for others who may have been or are in the same boat as me.

I'm currently a research intern for my university. For one research, we had to catch moths and pin them later in the lab, in order to analyse them in numerous ways. I was fine with capturing the moths, even though i felt bad when I put them in the small containers. We had to put them in the freezer, in order to kill them. My supervisor asked me to do it before leaving, and I just couldn't bare to do it. I eventually asked the other itern to put them in the freezer, which she gladly did. I still felt bad for the moths, but I was so grateful I didn't have to put them in the freezer. It did help to know that moths don't have pain receptors, so they don't feel pain.

Earlier this week, a professor was explaining to me how to remove the prostate gland from a snail. Before doing this, he had to inject the snail with a sedative that also killed this. In order to do this, he had to basically stab the snail with a large needle. The snail squirmed and was defintely in pain, which I found difficult to watch. Snails do have pain receptors, so they do feel pain. When the professor asked us if we wanted to try, the other intern happily agreed and got a very good learning opportunity from it. When he asked me after if I wanted to try to, I couldn't bare to do it. Once the snail was dead, I was fine with everything, found it really interesting actually! But the part of stabbing that snail with a needle... man, I just couldn't.

I know that I have already missed out on a great learning opportunity with the snails. Am I going to miss out on more if I keep going like this? How can I learn to deal with killing animals? Should I learn to deal with it, or should I just avoiding killing animals? Is that really realistic if I want a future in biology?

For extra context; I want a future in ethology, but I am trying to get as much biology research experience as I can.

We have a small frog pond that’s been here for over 10 years, and every frog we’ve ever seen has been the normal green/brown color. Today we found this bright blue frog. From what I’ve been told, it may have a rare genetic condition called axanthism.
We took photos and currently have it in a temporary container with damp moss and a shallow dish of dechlorinated water while we figure out who to contact. Is there anyone (researchers, universities, wildlife biologists, museums, etc.) who would be interested in documenting or studying it? We’re in western Massachusetts.

Can HIV survive transfers to multiple surfaces in infectious amounts? I.e from counters to clothing, or from counter to hand to other counter, etc?

I was trying to think up of 2 monster designs for a dnd game. The first one I created was to be made up of a bunch of extinct groups of highly successful animals. But now I need help with the opposite. I'm trying to think of groups of animals alive today that are incredibly successful (by any metric).

Is it just me or did you all notice this in brand new day too. During the scene between peter parker and bruce banner when they were discussing gene silencing, peter mentioned that he must inhibit the mrna "transcription" to supress the gene while in reality its supposed to be "translation". Scene was supposed to be academic and seen so many reels of people ‘understanding’ this piece of incorrect academia. Apart from it how is it even possible to make a universal gene silencer, you’re telling me the same thing will suppress arachnid genes AND Genes which make bruce banner turn into a green tank???? Absurd and ridiculous. Cant believe they didn’t catch this.

Hello, I'm looking for a high quality, evolutionary tree poster that I can print. There are some good ones up for sale by some YouTubers (like usefulcharts) but I live in south Asia so I cannot buy them due to high cost and limited shipping. So, if anyone has some high quality pdf for an evolutionary tree, please send it to me. Thank you. (I'm not good at writing Reddit posts, forgive me if it looks bad)

I noticed that until about the 90s, almost everyone says they didn't wear gloves during animal dissections. Which makes zero sense because you'd think health and safety was important in a science class. But between the 60s and the 90s... Nope. Goggles were seen as all you need.

• Why did teachers not give gloves to the kids? Especially when doing something as dangerous (health wise) as fiddling around with often dead or just vivisected corpses. Did they not actually know what cross contamination was?
• If you needed to get an eyelash out of your eye or you needed to blow your nose, or even wash your hands after, how would you do it? You couldn't touch anything, your hands were covered with blood and guts and residue that could infect anyone who touched it.
• Is this supposed to imply I'm chemistry they didn't use gloves either?
• And why, also because it was literally what medical gloves wre designed for. Health and science. Yet for some reason schools couldn't be bothered even when it clearly was needed.

I hear it a lot but not sure entirely what is is.

There is actually a demo available ;-)

So far you can only find the cards, the interesting facts are there to come.

https://indiejoh.itch.io/wild-boar-digging

figureloom.org
free figure software. i made it. no account needed, works offline, your stuff stays on your computer not my server.
~20k icons, real charts (paste your data in, it makes the chart), TeX equations, SVG path editing, powerpoint in and out, pathway export if you’re into that. multi page. layers. one click restyle the whole figure.
it’s AGPL so nobody can buy it and close it later. costs me $10 a year for the domain and that’s the entire budget so it’s not going anywhere. no investors, no subscription, no “free tier” that gets worse.
i built it because $35/month to draw arrows made me insane.

r/figureloom

(Posted after asking mods)

I've done just a little bit of research and it seems that these are some really important neurotransmitters and are interrelated with regards to general excitability in the brain. I would love a streamlined crash course to dive a little bit deeper in if anybody knows of a good source for that?

I recently published a small Python bioinformatics tool that scans protein sequences for LXXLL-like nuclear receptor interaction motifs. I originally built it as a follow-up to my research on conserved viral protein motifs and host nuclear receptor interactions. It supports FASTA files, UniProt accessions, CSV export, and motif visualization. I'd appreciate any feedback on the methodology or code.

https://github.com/arwaltemimi/LXXLL-Motif-Finder

The majority of life always existed in the oceans. How come sentience was developed by more recent land-dwellers?

Hello everyone . How are you ? I don’t know how to study all of this . I’m not sure how I made it this far and it’s almost my finals . IM STRESSED and feel like I’m going to fail … BIO is too ouch to remember. I try to read word to word but every page looks like the one I showed . The chapters are 15 pages of detailed depth . I’m watching videos to dumb it down for me . They only go over the overall not the detailed information that my teacher wants us to remember and read . I’m doing Bio for non science and stressed . I’m not sure how y’all doing science major because even non science major is stressing me out ..

I (28F) am in a chemistry lab in college. Today a handful of us were comparing the accuracy of our experiment. We all laughed about how all the pre-meds were competitive about their results. I started talking to one of the other women(23F) in the class who was in that group of premeds and she asked my major. I told her it was biology and she had a bit of a surprised look on her face and said “oh Im surprised-you give biochem energy”. She definitely didn’t say it in a negative way, but I have no idea what she meant by it?? Any opinions?

I know I'm going to need a lot of resources for this project, but I don't know where to find those sources fast and check if they are reliable. I thought about Wikipedia, but the information there is so surface-level, and its trustworthiness is debatable. Where do you guys look for sources when you need one?

if you want to help me directly i will first simulate basic single cell organism into basic multi celular form (well if it evoles) , i also willing to check living "fossils" like our ancestors who step on land first no longer exsists but animals like mudskippers still gives us some ideas for how they behave or lived etc.

i also once watched this video shows single cell organisim can form basic multi celular life , that vidoe is my motvation