More than a scientist — I have been a writer for as long as I can remember. We had creative writing projects in Kindergarten or 1st grade, where we’d color in the car or some other general object and then write three sentences about it using the new words we’d learned for colors and shapes…

An overview of natural pigment accumulation — Pigments are compounds that reflect specific wavelengths, creating color. Human cells can accumulate pigment granules — membrane-bound vesicles containing pigments or their precursors — as a natural byproduct of metabolism (i.e., waste products) or for specific functions (i.e., UV protection). Three major pigments accumulate in the cytoplasm of human cells…

The bane of genealogy — I’ve been visiting family the last two weeks, which inevitably led to talking about other family members and telling stories. I’ve been able to talk about gaps in the lineages I published, such as one of my uncle’s marriages that was overlooked, and share sources for information that had been…

Aicardi syndrome is a rare genetic disorder in which the brain does not properly form — specifically, the corpus callosum, the connection between the two halves of the brain, is at least partly missing if present at all. …

Mucus is secreted by mucous membranes. It is the main constituent of numerous substances in the human body, including phlegm, saliva, and snot. If you want to know more about these particular substances and what they do, I started the Gross Human Body newsletter as a biweekly dive into the…

Here at Gen Tales, we tell stories about family. Whether it’s how to find family, how to chart familial connections, or stories about those who came before us, it’s an interconnectedness so great, we will never know all of the connections in any of our trees. Adoption, though, that makes…

I was born in the U.S., the Midwest to be exact, so I’m biased to expecting surnames to pass from the father to the child. There are exceptions to this, of course, but even unmarried couples tended to give the child the father’s name when I was growing up. As…

Preventing sexual health education leads to ignorance about bodies — This particular topic is one that seems academic but actually hits close to home. In this politically rife time of book banning and abstinence-only approaches to education crossing swords with hot-headed discussions about abortion, maternity care, and birth control, it seems we’ve completely lost the plot. …

One of my grandparents was a first-generation American. His parents were German, at least in culture. …