Character X (3) -- Gratitude

"The quality or feeling of being grateful and thankful."

Dictionary.com

Gratitude is an attitude of knowing and acknowledging kind acts from others. 

Too often that we sometimes took so many things for granted. So many times we hold in mind that everything will fall into place automatically, that success and achievement comes naturally. 

Too often that we had neglected, or event tried to reject claims that the life that we are living now were the results of the contributions from people all around you. We tried to claim that it was only us who could lead ourselves to the life now we are living. 

But deep in us. We know.

We know that there were too many times that when we were on the brink of falling, someone held our hands.

We know that there were moments of self-collapse in our lives and someone was there to give you a pat on your shoulder.

Being grateful to others does not mean that you are relatively inferior to that individual. It doesn't mean that you are weak and therefore you need help from others. In fact it is just the opposite. Showing gratitude shows that you have a healthy self-image that you know how to acknowledge and appreciate what people had done for you.

Gratitude means acknowledging the past, enabling you to live rightly in the present, and give you legacy to strive into the future. 

Gratitude. A Grateful Attitude. 

Character X (2) -- Discipline

The talk of character continues. In the first post of this series we talked about humility and how it would help us if we'd integrate this into our daily lives. Discipline, is another ingredient in the recipe that we need in order to be successful or to live our life to the fullest.

Discipline, what it is all about?

"Discipline is the refining fire by which talent becomes ability"

-Roy L.Smith-

I've heard many people, including myself complaining about how limited is our time, how wish we could have 48 hours a day! Having said that and relising what is the problem with it, I knew that I had to change, I had to be more discpiline. You may think that discilpline restricts your creativity because you may think that it does not give you the freedom to do whatever you like to do at any given time or moment.

Think again.

Discipline is not restricting, in turn it releases and enhances your ability to be creative and at the same time being efficient. It helps you to finish your task in hand in the right duration and that allow you more time to do more things that you can ever think of. Be disciplined and you will find that you are having more time to do things than before.

Being discipline is to endure and finish off given task no matter how much you hate it. Being discipline is not an emotion-based decision, it is an rational-based decision. Meaning one day you might not be feeling to be discipline, but you chose to be discipline. For instance a property agent would have to have enormous self-discipline in order to achieve higher sales, it is not emotion-based decision because the agent may not have any income at all if him/her based on their own emotions. There would be tough times in life, time that we would have to dig deep and overcome it with a rational-based decision, to be discipline, to be persistant to overcome the situation.

So be discipline, and remember discipline does not restrict or stop you from being creative, but it enhances your creativity and turn them into enormous ability!

Gender Crisis

Human DNA consist of 2 pairs of chromosomes, each inherited from either one of the parents to make it up to 46 chromosomes in total. 44 of those were autosomal chromosomes and the other 2 were sex chromosomes with a combination of either 2 X chromosomes or 1 X and 1 Y.

This is a human karyotype for a male, where you can notice that it consist of one X and one Y chromosome respectively.

It is very important that after each stage of meiosis that the gametic cell in female and male consist of the normal number of chromosomes, that is 22 + 1. However due to non-dysjunction that might happen in the process of meiosis, it may cause unequal amount of chromosomes ended up in different resutling gamettes. Thus now we could easily observe serveral well understood phenotypic expression of these resulting genetic information that had been inherited in some individuals. Klinefelter syndrome and Turner syndrome are 2 of the more well known phenotype that was caused by non-dysjunction.

The left is the karyotype for a female with turner syndrome whereas the right is the karyotype for a male with Klinefelter syndrome.

Karyotype for a male with Klinefelter syndrome

The effect of these mutations are shown on the phenotype, both resulting in non-fertile offspring. Now here is the problem. Do we determine the gender of a particular individual depend solely on the chromosomes presence? Or do we have to consider the secondary sexual characteristics as well as the hormonal level that are presence in the particular individual? 

Throughout the history of Olympics, there were many cases where an athelete was stripped of the medals due to failure in the gender test. One of the most controversial case happened at the 2006 Asian Games. Santhi Soundarajan was a middle distance running silver medalist, but was later stripped off her medal due to her failure in the gender test that were carried out by a gynecologist, a geneticist, an endocrinologist, a psycologist, and an internal medicine specialist. They concluded the reason of Santhi Soundarajan falling the gender test was that she does not possess the sexual charateristics of a women. Media later had reported that she might be suffering from Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome (AIS) where the individual would have chromosome X and Y but the body would not respond to androgen, resulting in a female phenotype but does not posses ovaries.

Had this enlighten you?

XY does not necessary to be male. Sexual determination had been involved vastly in the sports arena to maintain the equality in competition, however in Santhi's case, she was unfortunate to be true because several female that were tested containing Y chromosome were allowed to compete in the 1996 Alanta Olympics.

Now since whether you are a male or female does not only lies on whether you have Y or X chromosome, let me ask you a question, 

Are you male or female?

References:

1. Matt Stopera, The 10 Most Shocking Olympic Gender Scandal [online], Available at http://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/the-10-most-shocking-olympic-gender-scandals [Accessed 23rd Oct 2010]
2. Murdoch Children's Medical Research Institute, Human Karyotype, [image online], Available at http://www.biotechnologyonline.gov.au/popups/img_karyotype.html [Accessed 23rd Oct 2010]
3. Seals Genetics, Prince of Wales Hospital, Randwick, Karyotype for Klinefelter's syndrome,  [image online], Available at http://www.genetics.com.au/factsheet/fs31.asp [Accessed 23rd Oct 2010]
4. Clinical Tools, Inc., Karyotype for Turner's syndrome,  [image online], Available at http://www.le.ac.uk/ge/genie/vgec/hp/chromabnormal.html [Accessed 23rd Oct 2010]
5. Katie Thomas, The New York Times, A lab is set to test the gender of some female atheletes, [online], Available at http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/30/sports/olympics/30gender.html?scp=1&sq=santhi%20soundarajan&st=cse [Accessed 23rd Oct 2010]
6. Emine Sanar, The Guardian, The gender trap, [online], Available at http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2008/jul/30/olympicgames2008.gender%20The%20gender%20trap [Accessed 23rd Oct 2010]