BioNumbers - the numbers you need, with references, in under a minute.
In August 2008, twenty highly motivated Harvard graduate students and post-docs were given the QBioChallenge - a set of six basic questions in quantitative biology. For example: How many mRNAs are in a yeast cell? (a)~10,000 (b)~100,000 (c)~1,000,000 or (d)~10,000,000 After an hour of searching the internet and Harvard's collection of electronic journals, they got fewer than half of the questions right. Following this frustrating effort they were given a tip: use bioNumbers (www.bioNumbers.org). Using bioNumbers they found the answers to most questions and had full references within 10 minutes. In a few more minutes they became registered users and added entries to the bioNumbers database themselves. Please tell us what would make bioNumbers more useful to you! |