Cambridge Q's

Question 1

at what point is a person “dead”?

Answer 1

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Question 2

how can reindeer tell the difference between spring and autumn?

Answer 2

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Question 3

how is a city like a cell?

Answer 3

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Question 4

how many genes are there in the genome of a rice plant

Answer 4

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Question 5

how would you design a better brain

Answer 5

Very oxygen dependent, change it so it doesn’t

Question 6

if I was given a magic wand and I could eradicate all third world problems
but would have to stop all medical research and development, would I do it?

Answer 6

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Question 7

if urine was emptied into the intestine instead of the bladder, what would
happen?

Answer 7

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Question 8

if you are in a boat in a lake and throw a stone out of the boat, what happens to the level of the water?

Answer 8

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Question 9

o if you could invite any 2 people alive or dead to a dinner party, who would
they be and why

Answer 9

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Question 10

what does the letter b stand for in b-lymphocyte?

Answer 10

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Question 11

what is your opinion on spontanteneous human combustion?

Answer 11

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Question 12

why don’t we just have one ear in the middle of our face

Answer 12

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Question 13

I’m going to play devil’s advocate. how do these prions actually affect the
brain?

Answer 13

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Question 14

calculate what volume of wine can be drunk to reach the legal
concentration of alcohol in the blood for driving.

Answer 14

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Question 15

how does the body try to remove or recognise poison?

Answer 15

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Question 16

how many moles of h2o is there in that cup of water? (tutor randomly pointed at his cup on the table)

Answer 16

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Question 17

how many people believe in evolution in the united states?

Answer 17

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Question 18

o how would I solve the aids crisis in south Africa -

Answer 18

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Question 19

how would you design an experiment to disprove the existence of god

Answer 19

Doubt it’s possible, as im sure others have attempted before

Question 20

why can you not see many stars when you stand on top of a mountain?

Answer 20

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Question 21

for which disease do you think it is an advantage to be a carrier of cystic
fibrosis?

Answer 21

sickle cell anaemia
the malarial pathogen life cycle involves red blood cells. So the sorts of genetic diseases where the carrier trait might be protective are those altering these such as sickle cell trait and certain thalaessemias. pure_joy - sounds like you are thinking of the same thing = “sickle cell” is named for the way the cells chaaracteristically change shape and the “anaemia” part is less effective oxygen transport.

Balanced polymorphisms & pathogen evolution was one of my interview topics. Got harder when they asked for explanations or “advantages” of other conditions that aren’t discussed in that way in the GCSE text books though.