#Biomedical Research Journals

[biomedres]

The Characteristics of Patients who have Undergone Total Vaginal Hysterectomy Procedure at Dr. Sardjito Hospital Yogyakarta

The Characteristics of Patients who have Undergone Total Vaginal Hysterectomy Procedure at Dr. Sardjito Hospital Yogyakarta in

Background: Total Vaginal Hysterectomy (TVH) procedure are recently used as one of surgical procedure in gynecology field to totally remove the uterus. This procedure were recommended by American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists to minimize surgical injury, reduce blood loss and costs of the surgery.

Objective: This study aims to determine description of the patients’s characteristics who have undergone the Total Vaginal Hysterectomy (TVH) procedure at Dr Sardjito Hospital, Yogyakarta, Indonesia.

Methods: This research is a descriptive analysis using secondary data obtained from medical records. Three characteristics were taken namely age, parity, and diagnosis.

Results: Within 11 months (November 2018 – September 2019), there were 21 patients that have carried out TVH procedures. There were 2 patients at the age below 65 years old, nineteen patients were 65 years old or older. Based on the parity, there was 1 nulliparous patient, 14 multiparous, and 6 grandemultipara patients. There was no primiparous patient. According to the diagnosis, there was 1 patient with grade 1-2 uterine prolapse, 20 patients with grade 3-4 uterine prolapse. Accompanying diagnosis in patients performed this procedure was 1 patient with grade 1-2 of cystocele, 20 patients with grade 3-4 of cystocele, 3 patients with grade 1-2 of rectocele, and 18 patients with grade 3-4 of rectocele.

Conclusion: The characteristics of patients who have undergone TVH procedures at Dr Sardjito Hospital Yogyakarta almost all of them were the same age as or more than 65 years old, multiparous, and with the underlying diagnosis was grade 3-4 of uterine prolapse.

For more articles in Journals on Biomedical Sciences clikc here bjstr

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[cactidu]

Research Project: Empowering High School Students Through Unique Extracurricular Research Opportunities

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[kathleenjovie]

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL ON BIOMEDICAL RESEARCH AND TECHNOLOGY

About Us

The only motto of International Journal on Biomedical Research and Technology (IJBRT) Publishers is accelerating the scientific and technical research papers, reflecting the standards of technology and the human health in the progressive levels and several emergency medical and clinical issues associated with it, the key attention is given towards biomedical research. Thus, asserting the requirement of a common evoked and enriched information sharing platform for the craving readers.

IJBRT is such a unique platform to gather and expose scientific knowledge on science and related discipline. This multidisciplinary open access publisher is rendering a global podium for the professors, academicians, researchers and students of the relevant disciplines to share their scientific excellence in the form of an original research article, review article, case reports, short communication, e-books, video articles, etc.

IJBRT Publishers are self-supporting, with no dependance on any other external sources (like universities, centers) for funds and strives for the best and enhanced quality publications competes the worldwide open access publishing market.

We always rely on the support from the members of our IJBRT family that is relevantly our Authors, Editorial Committee members, advisory board, Reviewers Board, and all the technical support teams all over the globe. We trust in the communal coordination and collaboration in terms of communicating the scientific knowledge of persons and Groups of Research centers/areas will in turn educates and elicits in innovative research.

In this case we would like to act as a media that anchors in the transformation of information in the form of global online publication.

To know more about our Journal: https://ijbiomed.com/

[covid-safer-hotties]

Also preserved on our archive

Swab, swirl, squirt, sit tight. By now, you’re likely familiar with the ritual of performing a COVID test at home or on the go. Disease detection has evolved swiftly since 2020, when you may have had to seek out a pop-up testing clinic or wait hours in line at your local health department, with clinicians on standby to stick a cotton swab up your nose.

Rapid COVID tests have since become a staple of cough-and-cold aisles across America, and just weeks ago the federal government resumed its periodic distribution of four free tests per household. But the convenience of self-testing comes with a caveat: The onus is on you to report your results.

First, know that test reporting isn’t mandatory in the U.S., so you’re hardly in hot water if you haven’t documented your COVID infection or lack thereof with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) or state or local public health authorities. Though perhaps more people would self-report if it were a requirement, says Dr. Sujata Ambardar, an infectious disease specialist at Inova Fairfax Hospital in Falls Church, Va.

“People probably are not self-reporting because they don’t want to have to not go to work—or they may want to go to work—it’s different reasons, and they may not want other people to know,” Ambardar tells Fortune. “Human nature is that they’ll probably only do it if they have to do it. Once you make it non-mandatory, then they tend not to do it.”

Today, if you get an antigen or PCR COVID test in a clinical setting, it’s still your health care provider’s job to report your results. While you’re well within your rights not to report your home test results, not doing so can come as a detriment to public health.

Between Feb. 1, 2022, and Jan. 1, 2023, an estimated 54 million adult COVID cases were unaccounted for in official records, according to a national study published Sept. 30 in the journal JAMA Network Open. That’s more than twice as many as those documented. At the state level, unaccounted infections ranged from 59,000 in Wyoming to 6.3 million in California. Researchers cited the government-led mass distribution of at-home tests as a possible driver of the discrepancies.

Report COVID results at MakeMyTestCount.org In theory, Ambardar says, reporting your COVID test results is “just one extra step.” But when that second line appears on the test card, confirming the disease has hit your household, formally documenting the outcome may not be your first priority. Even if you’re negative, you were likely feeling poorly enough to take the test in the first place and may not feel up to self-reporting.

But if and when you choose to do so, visit MakeMyTestCount.org to securely and anonymously report both positive and negative COVID test results. The site is a collaboration between medical data firm Care Evolution and the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering, part of the National Institutes of Health.

MakeMyTestCount.org is free to use and doesn’t require you to immediately self-report. In fact, your results don’t even have to be recent. As of early October, the site allowed for the input of home test results going back to November 2021. If you need proof of illness for work or school, the site provides documentation. And while over-the-counter tests that screen for both COVID and flu aren’t as common as those that screen for COVID alone, you can report those results on the site, too.

Keep in mind that it’s just as important to report negative results as positive ones. The week ended Sept. 21, national COVID test positivity was 11.6%, CDC records show, down from 13.4% the previous week. If not for the inclusion of negative results, test positivity would always be 100%.

Depending on the brand of COVID test you’re using, you may not have to visit MakeMyTestCount.org at all. Some brands, such as iHealth, offer a free corresponding smartphone app. With the tap of your finger, you can forward your results to the CDC and/or your health care provider. If you have the time, notifying your doctor can help guide the course of COVID treatment in your community, says Dr. Donald Dumford, an infectious disease specialist at Cleveland Clinic Akron General.

“The more we know about the true number of cases of COVID, the better we’re able to understand the transmission of COVID at this point in time, as we go from it being pandemic to endemic, which means it’s just something we live with now,” Dumford tells Fortune. “It also helps us to identify the potential rise of new strains of infection, especially if you’re seeing a strong uptick in cases.”

Study Link: jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2824211

[mindblowingscience]

Adhesives are everywhere, from the tape used in households to the bonding materials in vehicles and electronics. The search for stronger, more adaptable adhesives is ongoing and may come down to adding a dash of salt to two special polymer ingredients known as polyzwitterions, or PZIs. New research from a FAMU-FSU College of Engineering team led by Hoyong Chung, an associate professor in the Department of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering, shows a new way to create adhesives by using the natural attraction between positively and negatively charged materials. The work was recently published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

Continue Reading.

[cocainever]

what books about nutrition do you recommend? esp ones that talk about general food chem or about how it affects the body? i want to be disgustingly educated about nutrients🙏

omg sooo sorry anon for the late response I literally typed something up and my page refreshed 😖😖

(TL;DR I have no books but I have methods.)

anyways here is what I like to do!!

I started out reading books (you can see my favs in my recent post) but I switched to my kindle and online forms. I watch YouTubers about nutrition, eating disorders, chemistry, biology, food chem, and dieting.

I read a lot of public medical journals. like A LOT. It’s too expensive to buy the books so I use pub med and it’s free and I can learn a lot. You can put in key words and you’ll find tons of medical journals with research on that topic.

This is really tedious but I used to write literal essays on a food chemistry topic. Sometimes it could be about how “fat-free is a marketing ploy” or “yes, sugar through the mom gets passed through the womb”. This was the best way for me to retain information.

I take 3 science courses and I sometimes sign up for online ones too. Honestly as an ortho food cleanliness and wholeness has become a hyperfixation for me. It’s scary.

[bpod-bpod]

Lingering Effects

Red blood cell flow at forks in microvessels where they may be impeded and linger, and how that relates to the proportion of red cells in circulation before and after the bifurcation. Modelling in a microfluidic device reveals the details of microcirculation

Read the published research article here

Video from work by Aurelia Bucciarelli and colleagues

ARTORG Center for Biomedical Engineering Research, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland

Video originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Published in Biophysical Journal, October 2024

You can also follow BPoD on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook

[dingo-ate-my-hot-lettuce-crazy]

given that he grew up a normal life…

also these jobs are general examples, i dont know entirely enough if they are accurate

[materialsscienceandengineering]

Scientists successfully increase measurement rate of Raman spectroscopy by 100-fold

Researchers Takuma Nakamura, Kazuki Hashimoto, and Takuro Ideguchi of the Institute for Photon Science and Technology at the University of Tokyo have increased by 100-fold the measurement rate of Raman spectroscopy, a common technique for measuring the "vibrational fingerprint" of molecules in order to identify them. As the measurement rate has been a major limiting factor, this improvement contributes to advancements in many fields that rely on identifying molecules and cells, such as biomedical diagnostics and material analytics. The findings were published in the journal Ultrafast Science.

Read more.

[biomedres]

Hippocrates to COVID-19

Hippocrates to COVID-19 in Biomedical Journal of Scientific & Technical Research

Since ancient times, human beings considered that the climate has influence on the origin and nature of diseases. The relation between climate and health was first attributed to supernatural forces, till Hippocrates in 460 BC refused all these superstitions, legends, and beliefs. Furthermore, he separated medicine from religion, arguing that diseases were not punishments doled out by mythological gods, but consequences from environmental factors, diet, and health habits. Throughout history difference “schools of thought” were developed differing between those who strive to provide a better climate or environment and those who treat diseases, but both seek more “healthier” places than others and indicate which climate changes can increase the vulnerability of a population to certain pathologies. Hippocrates indicated in one of his writings called “Aphorisms” the following:

1. Aphorism 3: Of diseases and ages, certain of them are well- or ill-adapted to different seasons, places, and kinds of diet.

2. Aphorism 19: All diseases occur at all seasons of the year, but certain of them are more apt to occur and be exacerbated at certain seasons.

For more articles in Journals on Biomedical Sciences click here bjstr

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[iridescentpull]

Part two of the facts for the characters of GeR \o/ enjoy :) (part one)

Felps is known as the cryptid of the Favela Five. He frequently is found on either of their houses/apartments eating their food during the night. The group has learned not to question how or why he does this

Richas was adopted into the Favela Five after Cellbit found him while doing research for one of the authors at the publishing house. He quickly got attached and asked the FavelaFive how they felt about adopting a kid. Everyone was on board, and Richas was adopted a couple months later.

Tina and Bagi met at their university's graduation party. During the party, Bagi tried to build up the courage to ask for Tina's number all night, just for Tina to slip her number in her hand just before she left. They're coming up on two years dating

Fit was born in a very toxic and non-communicative household. To this day, he still struggles to accept help and speak about his emotions, but he's getting better

Ramón dreams of being a biomedical engineer so he can make the best prosthetic arm in the world for his dad (dont tell Fit that, though– he WILL cry)

Spreen and Fit's relationship was fast, which is part of the reason it failed (other than Spreen being not the best parent). Their relationship only lasted 3 years, and the last two years Ramón was with them

All the eggs study in the same school, albeit some of them are in different grades

Pac wanted to be a chemist when he was younger (but he's very happy with being a cat café owner)

Jaiden works as a scientist and was recently promoted to another lab on the opposite side of the island. She visits the city every time she can, since Bobby is her everything. Roier misses her a lot, but he's also so proud of her

Ramón has maroon octopus plushie he calls meathead. It was a gift from Fit a few weeks after he was adopted

Pac is bisexual, but has a preference over men

Both Fit and Pac have poor eyesight, with Fit being far-sight while Pac being near-sight

Bagi has a degree in psychology but doesn't use it– she's very happy working at Fit’s gym so far

Pac is the only one in the Favela Five who never went to pursue higher education, and he doesn't plan to

Fit has insomnia. When he can't sleep, he likes to sit on the balcony of his apartment and either journal or read a book

Out of everyone in the story, Pac, Mike and Cellbit are the only characters who knew each other before moving to Quesadilla City

Missa always feels guilty for leaving his family for long periods of time, even if his family tells him over and over that its okay and that they understand

Roier works at Fit’s gym, but he also works part-time at his family's taqueria

Pac's love language is gift-giving. Even when he struggled with money, he always made sure to spare some money to gift Richas things

Pac was dropped off in the orphanage when he was six

Fit stress-bakes. If you arrive to his apartment and there are boxes and boxes of cupcakes and cookies, chances are he is VERY stressed

Pac knows he has a sister but has no clue where she is or how to even communicate with her (if she even is alive)

Tina and Bagi are foster parents. Once Empanada stayed at their house for a few weeks, the trio clicked so well together that Tina and Bagi decided to adopt Em

Fit is Sunny's godfather, Tubbo and Niki are Chay and Tallu's godparents, and Phil is Ramón's gofather

Tubbo works part-time at Fit’s gym while he studies for a mechinal engineering degree

[weekendviking]

Researching stuff.

Adding links here to methods for finding out things, because on the modern internet, actually finding out accurate information is now uniformly obfuscated by the relentless enshitification of search functions, proliferation of search engine optimised content mills, nation state level intentional misinformation and propaganda programs, and of course, these days, all the crap sources above are endlessly enriched by the output of generic Large Language Model plagiarism statistical bullshit engines, both image and text (And video and Bot and so forth).

Finding academic and peer reviewed Journal Articles - they haven't quite fucked google scholar yet, so it's better than the enshittified google or bing or <insert enshittified search bar embed here> whatever.

So I generally hit up Google Scholar for whatever subject, author name, paper title or similar that I've gleaned from whatever article or mention or wikpedia page sparked my interest. Often that gets me what I want, as there's often a link to a pdf of what I need within those search results. Yay.

If that doesn't work, then I start escalating, usually via the methodology here described at Logic of Science's blog:

They wrote it down so I don't have to. Excellent. Although some of the links in there have degraded. So the main ones I'll put here:

And then there's the pirate nuclear option, Sci Hub. Because it makes the big publishers and corporates really angry, don't use sci hub from a work or academic 'net access environment. Also it necessarily moves around a lot, so I generally search up where is sci hub now, to avoid going to a link that's expired or may now be a honeypot/trap:

Also, look out for content mill generated fake journals. I usually check here:

The other thing that's getting harder is finding out whether an image is misattributed or just plain fake. So right click and save the image, and then go to images dot google dot com, which is nowhere near as good as it used to be, but still not entirely enshittified, and click on the wee camera icon to the right and upload the image, and look through the results. What you find is _All_ the places that have posted that image, page after page of them. Scroll through - click on the ones that seem to be the oldest, check who's posting them. What you often find with viral outrage images is that they are _not_ what you think, especially if the image is a bit old, a bit bitrotted, or there's something else wrong - the clothing isn't right for the country/culture/time being outraged about, or something like that. Sometimes you find out that it's true, but most of the time you find out that it's wrong, that someone has just done a quick search for an image that roughly matches the outrage or the politics they want to push, added some outragey comments, and shared it, and enjoyed their flamey fire. I've been doing this for decades, ever since I started using a browser capable of image searching, mainly because I was outraged at people posting fake geology memes. But it works just as well on finding anything else.

And of course, if it's to a website, see if the wayback machine still has it cached:

[beguines]

In the early 1990s—at the peak of a 20-year growth in the US crime rate—the federal government announced the launch of a "violence initiative." Headed by the US Public Health Service and backed by senior psychiatrists such as Fredrick Goodwin (then chief scientist at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH)), this project drew on biological theories of crime which dated back to the nineteenth century Lombrosian concept of the "born criminal". It was proposed that a mass-screening programme of inner-city children would be undertaken across America to determine those biologically or genetically predisposed towards anti-social and violent behaviour. As a vaccine against criminality, once the "conduct-disordered" children had been identified they could then be administrated psychotropic drugs. Breggin and Breggin's detailed discussion of the violence initiative rightly demonstrates the racist ideology behind the supposed objectivity of this biomedical project; a focus on inner-city youth is blatantly a focus on minority and black communities. At the time, Goodwin allegedly made remarks at the National Advisory Mental Health Council comparing "inner-city youth to monkeys who live in a jungle, and who just want to kill each other, have sex, and reproduce".

Psychiatry's involvement in such projects is perhaps less shocking when considering their long support for racial theories of the mind. In 1850, physician Samuel Cartwright reported in The New Orleans Medical and Surgical Journal his discovery of two new mental disorders affecting slaves in the Deep South: the first, drapetomania, was a disease causing slaves to run away from their owners, while the second, dysaesthesia aethiopis, resulted in the slaves becoming lazy, showing a lack of respect for the rights of property and breaking work tools. The prescribed cure for both disorders was "whipping, hard labor, and, in extreme cases, amputation of the toes". This psychiatric naturalisation of slavery as normal, inevitable, and even healthy for the black slave has been referred to by Burstow as a blatant example of "social control medicalized." Yet as Greenberg reminds us, for the burgeoning community of mad doctors, the discovery of such mental conditions held out the promise of contributing to contemporary society through the establishment of new "scientific" ideas in the area.

The commonalities between slavery-era diagnostic constructions and psychiatry's recent focus on inner-city youth are what Breggin and Breggin describe as "the psychiatric labeling of resistive or rebellious activity in order to justify medical control." This process of enforcing the status quo through the biomedical pathologisation of the political has allowed the psychiatric profession to enhance their respectability, capital, and power in capitalist society. Though treated with suspicion by some colleagues in the north of the United States, Cartwright's ideas were widely supported by fellow physicians, local politicians, and slave owners in the south. Whereas the classifications were abruptly consigned to history by the civil war only a few years later, drapetomania, along with Kraepelin's biological theories on praecox (later relabelled as schizophrenia), were highly influential on medical researchers in the early twentieth century who contended that African Americans were "biologically unfit" for freedom.

Bruce M.Z. Cohen, Psychiatric Hegemony: A Marxist Theory of Mental Illness

[covid-safer-hotties]

Also preserved in our archive (Updated daily!)

Researchers report that a new AI tool enhances the diagnostic process, potentially identifying more individuals who need care. Previous diagnostic studies estimated that 7 percent of the population suffers from long COVID. However, a new study using an AI tool developed by Mass General Brigham indicates a significantly higher rate of 22.8 percent.

The AI-based tool can sift through electronic health records to help clinicians identify cases of long COVID. The often-mysterious condition can encompass a litany of enduring symptoms, including fatigue, chronic cough, and brain fog after infection from SARS-CoV-2.

The algorithm used was developed by drawing de-identified patient data from the clinical records of nearly 300,000 patients across 14 hospitals and 20 community health centers in the Mass General Brigham system. The results, published in the journal Med, could identify more people who should be receiving care for this potentially debilitating condition.

“Our AI tool could turn a foggy diagnostic process into something sharp and focused, giving clinicians the power to make sense of a challenging condition,” said senior author Hossein Estiri, head of AI Research at the Center for AI and Biomedical Informatics of the Learning Healthcare System (CAIBILS) at MGB and an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. “With this work, we may finally be able to see long COVID for what it truly is — and more importantly, how to treat it.”

For the purposes of their study, Estiri and colleagues defined long COVID as a diagnosis of exclusion that is also infection-associated. That means the diagnosis could not be explained in the patient’s unique medical record but was associated with a COVID infection. In addition, the diagnosis needed to have persisted for two months or longer in a 12-month follow-up window.

Precision Phenotyping: A Novel Approach The novel method developed by Estiri and colleagues, called “precision phenotyping,” sifts through individual records to identify symptoms and conditions linked to COVID-19 to track symptoms over time in order to differentiate them from other illnesses. For example, the algorithm can detect if shortness of breath results from pre-existing conditions like heart failure or asthma rather than long COVID. Only when every other possibility was exhausted would the tool flag the patient as having long COVID.

“Physicians are often faced with having to wade through a tangled web of symptoms and medical histories, unsure of which threads to pull, while balancing busy caseloads. Having a tool powered by AI that can methodically do it for them could be a game-changer,” said Alaleh Azhir, co-lead author and an internal medicine resident at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, a founding member of the Mass General Brigham healthcare system.

The new tool’s patient-centered diagnoses may also help alleviate biases built into current diagnostics for long COVID, said researchers, who noted diagnoses with the official ICD-10 diagnostic code for long COVID trend toward those with easier access to healthcare.

The researchers said their tool is about 3 percent more accurate than the data ICD-10 codes capture, while being less biased. Specifically, their study demonstrated that the individuals they identified as having long COVID mirror the broader demographic makeup of Massachusetts, unlike long COVID algorithms that rely on a single diagnostic code or individual clinical encounters, skewing results toward certain populations such as those with more access to care.

“This broader scope ensures that marginalized communities, often sidelined in clinical studies, are no longer invisible,” said Estiri.

Limitations and Future Directions Limitations of the study and AI tool include the fact that health record data the algorithm uses to account for long COVID symptoms may be less complete than the data physicians capture in post-visit clinical notes. Another limitation was the algorithm did not capture the possible worsening of a prior condition that may have been a long COVID symptom. For example, if a patient had COPD that worsened before they developed COVID-19, the algorithm might have removed the episodes even if they were long COVID indicators. Declines in COVID-19 testing in recent years also makes it difficult to identify when a patient may have first gotten COVID-19.

The study was limited to patients in Massachusetts.

Future studies may explore the algorithm in cohorts of patients with specific conditions, like COPD or diabetes. The researchers also plan to release this algorithm publicly on open access so physicians and healthcare systems globally can use it in their patient populations.

In addition to opening the door to better clinical care, this work may lay the foundation for future research into the genetic and biochemical factors behind long COVID’s various subtypes. “Questions about the true burden of long COVID — questions that have thus far remained elusive — now seem more within reach,” said Estiri.

Reference: “Precision phenotyping for curating research cohorts of patients with unexplained post-acute sequelae of COVID-19” by Alaleh Azhir, Jonas Hügel, Jiazi Tian, Jingya Cheng, Ingrid V. Bassett, Douglas S. Bell, Elmer V. Bernstam, Maha R. Farhat, Darren W. Henderson, Emily S. Lau, Michele Morris, Yevgeniy R. Semenov, Virginia A. Triant, Shyam Visweswaran, Zachary H. Strasser, Jeffrey G. Klann, Shawn N. Murphy and Hossein Estiri, 8 November 2024, Med. DOI: 10.1016/j.medj.2024.10.009 www.cell.com/med/fulltext/S2666-6340(24)00407-0?_returnURL=https%3A%2F%2Flinkinghub.elsevier.com%2Fretrieve%2Fpii%2FS2666634024004070%3Fshowall%3Dtrue

[mindblowingscience]

Engineered protein filaments originally produced by bacteria have been modified by scientists to conduct electricity. In a study published recently in the journal Small, researchers revealed that protein nanowires—which were modified by adding a single compound—can conduct electricity over short distances and harness energy from moisture in the air. "Our findings open up possibilities for developing sustainable and environmentally friendly electrical components and devices, based on proteins," says Dr. Lorenzo Travaglini, lead author on the paper. "These engineered nanowires could one day lead to innovations in energy harvesting, biomedical applications and environmental sensing."

Continue Reading.

[sporesgalaxy]

Tumblr keeps crashing each time I send this so I gotta be quick: do have any tips on how to study biology (college is not an option atm)

Oh boy! I will do my best!

I've listed the basic irl resources for biological information first, followed by some online resources.

I've got a strong Animalia bias, so apologies that I don't have any botany-specific sites for you. 😔

I'm sure there's some stuff I'm forgetting. I'll add on to this if I think of anything!

If there's anything specific you need help finding a reliable biological resource for, let me know and I will try my best to help find you something!

•••

Finding primary sources (stuff written by the scientists who did the research [i.e. a journal article]) is always very good, but reliable secondary resources (someone else summarizing other people's research [i.e. Wikipedia page, book]) can be very valuable as well.

•••

Meatspace Resources

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I would highly recommend checking to see if there is a Nature Park in your area! Nature parks often have volunteer programs and/or free educational opportunities. In my experience, naturalists are always very excited to meet new people interested in learning about local ecology!

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There's also Zoos and Aquariums of course, although I know they cost money and are typically geared more towards kids. I'm lucky to live near some nice ones. Maybe check if there are any special programs happening at Zoos/Aquariums in your area (by checking their website[s]), where you might learn more than you would on a normal day trip.

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Plus natural history museums, which usually have rotating exhibits so that you can keep learning new things when you come back! They also have more of an all-ages vibe than Zoos in my experience. Once again dependant on if there's one near you, and not free.

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Last but not least: the local library, although obviously not every published book is a flawless resource. Still, might be interesting to poke around! There's usually some sort of digital search catalogue to make finding things easier. Libraries are fun :)

•••

Online Resources

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Jstor is GREAT. Not all jstor articles are open access/free, but some are! And you can set a search filter to show you only things you can access.

One good way to find out what experts have written for other experts about biology: search a species name or biological concept or type of experimental study, etc. etc., in jstor's journal articles. I've linked a search for journal articles "I can access" containing the word "biology" as an example.

The website layout can feel a little obtuse at first but I think if you fiddle around with it a bit, it's not too bad to figure out? Feel free to kick my ass if I'm wrong djgjkeg

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Wikipedia is actually a very good place to introduce yourself to a lot of biological concepts. I would recommend checking out some of the sources yourself if you can-- usually at least some of them are free, and that can introduce you to new free resources for learning more (today I discovered bugguide.net!). Often they will link you to jstor.

But biology-focused wiki pages have a pretty good track record for Correct Information in my experience. The only issue I've run into is there being too little information sometimes.

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Pubmed is a really good resource to read biomedical scientific papers for free if that interests you at all! Reading scientific papers is a really important skill and I think you can pick up a lot just by diving in and googling words you don't know.

A well-designed experiment is replicable (that is, you can understand from the paper how they set things up to the point that you could do it yourself, given the resources). It's also important to pay attention to sample size. The more times you replicate any process in an experiment, the more likely you will be able to identify what the most common result really is, and why.

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Fishbase is a website I was introduced to in my icthyology class to find info about different fish species :) It kind of just dumps all the info on you in a big text wall, but many pages include great details about life cycle and diet that might go unmentioned on wiki pages.

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I've never used bugguide.net before today, but so far it seems solid and like it has a lot of good info. I assume it is similar to fishbase but for bugs

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EDIT: FREE ONLINE TEXTBOOKS I FORGOT ABOUT!!!

I used both of these for university classes at some point. I didn't use them much, so there may be issues I don't know about.

In my experience though they were solid resources, if a little confusingly worded at times. Bouncing between the textbooks and wikipedia tended to help me.