May 15, 2013
If you haven’t yet heard, college is expensive. Darn expensive. Thankfully, there are now free online universities for those of us daunted by the hefty price tag attached to traditional university courses. These online universities, such as Coursera and Udacity, provide quality courses taught by [...]
February 27, 2013
Last week we put up a quiz in the spirit of Jeopardy! after host Alex Trebek made use of 23andMe in one of his game clues. The time was up last night to make your entry. So here are the answers to our Homage to Jeopardy! Quiz. Remember you didn’t have to get everything correct to be entered into the [...]
December 24, 2012
If you could just get your Christmas tree to spit into a tube and extract some DNA, you might learn a lot about your holiday decoration. For starters, you might be able to tell where it originated. Plant genetics, like animal genetics, is influenced by geography. A team of Douglas fir tree researchers, [...]
November 21, 2012
Thanksgiving -- it’s a time for friends, family and, of course, food. Thanks to modern science, we now know quite a lot about the foods that grace our holiday tables. Over the last few years, scientists have worked hard to sequence many common Thanksgiving foods: turkeys, potatoes, corn, apples, wine [...]
October 5, 2012
Ever since my kids were wee tykes in diapers, I’ve gone through the same bedtime routine of reading them a story. We went from picture books to the simple joys of Seuss, to following the wizardly adventures of Harry, Hermione, and Ron. Our nightly page-turners don’t usually delve into the world of [...]
September 26, 2012
The 23rd Chromosome This month we’ve run a series of quizzes for the back-to-school season. Here’s are the answers to our third and final quiz. Congratulations to Toni K., who was selected randomly from the large group of test takers who got all the answers right. You can see how you did by comparing [...]
September 17, 2012
Okay students, pencils down! A week ago Friday we posted the second in a three-part series of educational courses for back-to-school season. The entries are now in. You can see how you did by comparing with the correct answers below. Also, a special congratulations goes out to Damien Marsic for being [...]
September 10, 2012
Attention all students! We're extending the Genetics 101 quiz through Sunday, September 16th to give everyone plenty of time to brush up on their genetics and earn a chance to win a $25 Amazon gift card! If you already filled out the quiz and weren’t prompted to enter your name and email address (or you [...]
September 7, 2012
Our Hero Gregor Mendel, an Austrian monk and biologist, worked out the pattern of inheritance of various traits. He showed that a “dominant” trait is one that always shows up in offspring while a “recessive” trait is one that is masked by a dominant gene. Update: If you took this quiz before 10 a.m. [...]
September 5, 2012
Correction: Ouch! We mistakenly listed the wrong answer to the last question in the quiz. It has been corrected. Populations are more similar now than they were 500 years ago due to migration and intermixing. The correction did not change the results for the winner. Okay students, pencils down! Last [...]
