October 15, 2012
For decades, a patient’s family health history has been a keystone to any wellness plan. A simple record of medical conditions your siblings, your parents, aunts, uncles and grandparents struggled with can help you and your doctor know what to watch for to keep you healthy. Like family health histories, [...]
June 5, 2012
(Editor's note: This post originally ran in June, but we thought it was worth a second look on the eve of the election.) As Americans approach the elections this November, discussions of what influences economic and political preferences will surely flood our television sets and news feeds. Pundits use [...]
May 16, 2012
Last week we quizzed our readers on heritability, a genetics concept that is often misinterpreted. Congratulations to Monica P., the winner of the quiz! She got all the answers correct and will receive an Amazon gift card. Read on for the answers and to learn more about what we can say about nature vs. [...]
May 9, 2012
Nature vs. nurture is a question scientists and non-scientists alike have grappled with since the earliest days of human history. One concept we use to describe these two complementary forces is "heritability", or the proportion of variation in the development of a disease or trait in a population that's due [...]
January 27, 2009
If Facebook is starting to take over your life, maybe your genes are partly to blame. Researchers from UC San Diego and Harvard University have shown that certain aspects of a person’s social network – how many people consider that person a friend, the likelihood that two of a person’s friends are [...]
