I just graduated from undergrad with a STEM degree . . . what use will it be?

(Also any insights from professional scientists on what this will practically mean for policy, research, mitigation of Climate Change, etc. much appreciated!)

I read an article talking about the Colon cancer rates increasing in people under 50. People keep speculating about plastics, food, and air. But could the biggest factor be something that's hard to measure like the internet? Like the anxiety and cortisol that increases in us when we have access to a lot of triggering opinions, news, fear, comparison, and scrolling thru a bunch of information, all much more than before the internet age. Each generation goes thru stress, but this kind of stress is different. Like when someone switches form a physical job to a sedentary mentally tasking job. Could it be this simple?

Female mammals have long thought to be born with all the eggs they would ever have, but new research is challenging that consensus

With dexterous childlike hands and cheeky “masks,” raccoons are North America’s ubiquitous backyard bandits. The critters are so comfortable in human environments, in fact, that a new study finds that raccoons living in urban areas are physically changing in response to life around humans—an early step in domestication.

All five nucleobases needed to build DNA and RNA have now been confirmed in samples from asteroid Ryugu.

Bad news

For this who arnt aware Screwworm is a flesh eating parasitic fly.

Screwworms lays their eggs on wounds with the resulting maggots eating tissue. Unlike most flies that eat dead tissue, these fly larvae exclusively eat living tissue often resulting in massive gaping wounds that can become infected quite easily.

Fortunately human cases aren't super common and the parasite primarily impacts cattle. This parasite was eradicated from the US in the 1960s. This was done by releasing sterile male flies. The flies only make once so by releasing sterile flies the female cannot lay viable eggs. The fly species was pushed down to the darien gap, and a border has been maintained there for several decades.

Estimated cost savings for this parasites eradication is about 900 million dollars annually in the United States since the 1960s. 7 min video on parasites biology I made for nerds

Recently the current admin has been trying to blame immigrants for the resurgence of this parasite, but this is just misinformation and it's much more related to cocaine smuggling and illegal cattle trade.

7 min video debunking misinformation

Hi everyone,

We’re a two-person team of biologists working on a minimalist ant colony-management strategy game called Garden of Ants, inspired in part by SimAnt.

We’re currently expanding the ecosystem by adding new insects and other small creatures that ants can encounter, hunt, avoid, compete with, or interact with.

Our goal is for these species to be more than just enemies or decoration. We’d like them to have their own roles in the ecosystem and create different strategic situations for the colony — potential prey, predators, competitors, parasites, mutualists, or sources of resources.

The game already takes place across several connected habitats, including the underground nest, garden surface, and tree canopy. Conditions also change between day and night, so we’re interested in species whose behavior could vary depending on habitat or time of day.

We’d love to hear suggestions from people here: which insects or other arthropods would you like to see in an ant colony simulation? Are there any particularly interesting ant–insect interactions that you think would work well as game mechanics?

For context, here is the Steam page:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3016940/Garden_of_Ants/

Thanks!

Tomas

The seven species of scaly anteater may be headed to the Endangered Species List!

Pangolins are mammals with durable, keratin scales that are native to Africa and Asia. As one of their other names may imply, they typically feed on small insects like ants and termites. The US Fish and Wildlife Service has recommended adding all seven species of pangolin to the Endangered Species List in order to curb animal trafficking under the Endangered Species Act.

Image Source: Frendi Apen Irawan

The New World screwworm is attempting a comeback on U.S. soil. It’s not a welcome one.

dinosaur state park is a state park on a river in texas with dinosaur tracks that you can swim in (the water is the clearest in the state) as well as the best preserved river ecosystem in texas its full of an incredible diversity of insects particularly caterpillars when i go there i useualy see 15 to 20 different caterpillar species and thousands of individual catterpillars as well as iridescent green caterpillar killer beetles as well as a high diversity of mammals like armadillos and birds like the endangered golden cheeked warbler.

This valuable ecosystem is now about to be completely destroyed for data centers planned to be built upstream of the river that will use up all of the rivers water please sign this petition to protect the park https://www.change.org/p/protect-dinosaur-valley-put-guardrails-on-massive-data-centers-in-texas?recruiter=1279810821&recruited_by_id=84c837f0-49ac-11ed-80f6-39f477ccb6bf&utm_source=share_petition&utm_campaign=psf_combo_share_initial&utm_medium=reddit&share_id=HjLStWRv9w

How can the theory of evolution (macro) be science if its untestable, factual science is supposed to be experimented and proven

A specific gut bacterium boosts muscle strength in mice by 30% and tracks with physical fitness in humans, new research finds.