Sex Determination: More complicated than you thought - Aaron Reedy (P2)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMWxuF9YW38

Since our own sex is determined by genes, and we do know of these other animals that have their sex determined by genes. It's easy to assume that for all animals the sex of their baby still must be determined by genetics. 

However, for some animals, the question of whether it will be a boy or a girl has nothing to do with genes at all, and it can depend on something like the weather. These are animals like allligators and most of turtles. 

In these animals, the sex of an embryo in a developing egg is determined by the temperature. In these species, the sex of the baby is not yet determined when the egg is laid, and it remains undetermined until sometimes in the middle of the overall development period, when a critical time is reached. And during this time, the sex is completely determined by temperature in the nest. In pained turtles, for example, warm temperature above the critical temperature will produce females whithin the eggs, and cool temperature will produce a male. I'm not really sure who came up with this mnemonic, but you can remember that when it comes to painted turtles, they are all hot chicks and cool dudes. 

For some tropical fish, the question of will it be a boy or will it be a girl isn't settled until even later in life. You see, clownfish all start out their life as males, however, as they mature, they become female. They also spend their life in a small group with a strict dominance hierachy, where only the most dominant male and female reproduce. And amazingly if the dominant female in the group dies, the largest and most dominant male will then quickly become female and take her place, and all the other males will move up one rank in the hierachy.

In another very different ocean animal, the Green Spoon worm, the sex of the babies is determined by completely different aspect of the environment. For this species, it is simply a matter of where a larval happens to randomly fall on the sea floor. If a larval lands on the open sea floor, then it will become a female. But if it lands on top of a female, then it will becomes a male. So for some species, the question of boy or girl is answered by genetics. For others, it's anwered by the environment. 

And for others still, they don't even bother with the question at all. Take whiptail lizards, for example. For those desert lizards, the answer is easy. It's a girl. It's always a girl. There are a nearly all-female species, and althought they still lay eggs, these eggs hatch out female clones of themselves. So will it be a girl or will it be a boy? Throughout the entire animal kingdom, it does really all depend on the system of sex determination. For human, that system is a genetic XY system. And for me and my wife, we found out, it's gonna be a baby boy.  

embryo (n): phôi, phôi thai

critical (adj): phê bình, phê phán, nguy cấp, nguy kịch 

mnemonic (adj): thuộc về trí nhớ 

tropical (adj): nhiệt đới 

settle (v) bố trí, xếp đặt 

mature (v) trưởng thành 

strict (adj): chính xác, nghiêm ngặt

dominance (n): ưu thế, thế trội hơn, địa vị, địa vị thống trị

hierachy (n): hệ thống phân cấp, cấp bậc

Sex Determination: More complicated than you thought - Aaron Reedy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMWxuF9YW38

My wife is pregnant right now with our first child, and when people see her with her big baby bump, the first question people ask, almost without fail, is, "Is it a boy or is it a girl?" 

Now there are some assumptions behind that question that we take for granted because of our familiarity with our own human biology. For human babies, we take it for granted that there's a 50/50 chance of either answer, boy or girl. But why is it that way? Well, the answer depends on the sex determination system that has evolved for our species. You see, for most mammals, the sex of a baby is determined genetically with the XY chromosome system. Mammals have a pair of sex chromosomes, one passed down from Mom, and one from Dad. A pair of X's gives us a girl, and an X and a Y together gives us a boy. Since females only have X's to pass on in their egg cells, and males can give either an X or a Y in their sperm cells, the sex is determined by the father and the chance of producing a male or a female is 50/50. 

This system has worked well for mammals, but throughout the tree of life, we can see other systems that have worked just as well for other animals. There are other groups of animals that also have genetic sex determination, but their systems can be pretty different from ours. 

Birds and some reptiles have their sex genetically determined but instead of the sex being determined by Dad, their sex is determined by Mom. In those groups, a pair of Z sex chromosomes produces a male, so these males only have Z's to give. However, in these animals, one Z and one W chromosome together, as a pair, produces a female. In this system, the chance of a male or a female is still 50/50, it just depends on whether Mom puts a Z or a W into her egg. 

Certain groups have taken genetic sex determination in completely other directions. Ants, for example, have one of the most interesting systems for determining sex, and because of it, if you are a male ant, you do not have  a father. In an ant colony, there are dramatic divisions of labor. There are soldiers that defend the colony, there are workers that colect food, clean the nest, and care for the young, and there's a queen and a small group of males reproductives. Now, the queen will mate and then store sperm from the males. And this is where the system gets really interesting. If the queen use the stored sperm to fertilize an egg, then that egg will grow up to become female. However, if she lays an egg without fertilizing it, then that egg will still grow up to be an ant, but it will always be a male. So you see, it's impossible for male ants to have fathers. And male ants live their life like this, with only one copy of every gene, much like a walking sex cell. This system is called "haplodiploid" system and we see it not only in ants, but also in other highly social insects like bees and wasps. 

take for granted: nhượng bộ

without fail: chắc chắn, nhất định

a pair of: đôi, cặp 

My little happies

Ở một mình mà bếp núc thế này cũng coi là đầy đủ rồi nhỉ? :)

The power of passion - Richard St. John

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNu6on8dk2o

Bill was such an underachieves, his parents actually sent him to counselling. Yeah, I can just hear the neighbours back then saying, "Jeez, that Gates kid. What a loser. He's never gonna go anywhere". And he didn't, until he discovered his passion for sorfware. 

The big problem is finding your passion. Sure, there's the kid that knows they wanna be an accountant or an architect or an astronauts form the time they were 10. But I found a much bigger group of successful people who, when they were young, and even when they were older, didn't have a clue what their passion was, and it took them a long time to find it, or to fall into it. 

Dawn Lepore, Chief Information Officer at Charles Schwab, said to me, "I fell into what I do, and I didn't know I loved it until I fell into it". And I hear that a lot. 

So, how do people find their passion? Well, they just get out there and try a lot of stuff and explore many paths. Robert Munsch explored many paths. He said to me: "I studied to be a priest and that turned out to be a disaster. I tried working on a farm. They didn't like me. I worked on a boat. It sank. I tried a lot of things that didn't work. But I kept trying, and then I tried something that did work." And I'd say it worked; as a children's author, he's sold over 40 million books. 

Yes, finding a job we love is like finding a person we love. Sometimes we've just got to go on a lot of really bad dates before we find the right one. 

Now, I read a survey 18- to 25 year-olds, and 81% said their fist or second life goal was to get rich. And I thought, boys, they've got it all wrong. Because I've interviewed many millionaires and billionaires, and guess how many of them said their life goal is to get rich? Zero! They didn't do it for money, they did it for love. They went for the zing, not the "ka-ching" "ka-ching". When Bill Gates and Paul Allen  started Microsoft, they didn't do it for money. Bill says, "Paul and I never thought we would make much money. We just loved writing software." And with that attitude, he became the richest man in the world. J. K. Rowling didn't write Harry Potter books for money. She said, "I love writing these books. I just wanted to make enough money to continue to write. And with that attitude, she became a billionaire. 

I became a millionaire by following my heart, not my wallet, and a number of times I walked away from great-paying jobs to do poor-paying jobs I loved better. Once was when I had a great job, travelling the world, making a lot of money, but I wasn't doing the one thing I loved at the time, which was photography. So I said, I think I'll leave and start my own little photo company. 

My heart said, Yeah! Go for it!. My wallet, and all my friends, I might add, said, Are you crazy? You can't walk away from all the money! You'll starve. I didn't listen to them, I walked away, and yeah, at first, there wasn't much money, but it didn't master, because I was having fun doing what I loved. And eventually, the money came, and much more than if I'd stayed in my old job. 

So I learned it's true, what they say: If you do what you love, money comes anyway. So I'd say if you really want to get rich, put money at the bottom of your goals list and passon at the top. And why does it work that way? Because if you love what you do, you automatically do the other 7 things that lead to success and wealth. You'll work hard, you'll push yourself, you'll persist. And what if you're in a job you don't love? Well, just follow your passion on the side. Remember, Albert Einstein was a patent clerk. That was his job, but his passion was physics, and he wrote 4 of his most important papers in spare time as a hobby, and became one of the world's greatest scientists. So it's amazing what you can do if you love what you do. 

Happy Labor Day!

Không được đẹp mắt bằng Lotteria nhưng chất lượng thì tuyệt vời! =)))

Thực đơn: Đậu que xào thịt + thịt rán chấm sốt Mayonnaise. Yummy!!! 

The power of passion - Richard St. John

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNu6on8dk2o

The eight traits successful people have in common. Number one: passion.

Successful people love what they do. When I asked Russell Crowe what led to his Academy Award for Best Actor, he said: "The bottom line is I love the actual job of acting. I have a great passion for it". 

Successful people in all of fields love what they do, whether it's astrophysicist Jaymie Matthew, author J. K. Rowling or athlete Michael Phelps. And not just big names. Margaret MacMillan, a history professor, says: "I've spent my life doing what I love". Carlos, a bus driver, sit with at Starbucks says: "I love what I do. I've only missed 3 days in 4 years". And believe it or not, even successful dentists love what they do. Izzy Novak says: "I love dentistry! I can't imagine being anything else."

But what about business? Many of you are in business, and we tend to think business is more about cold numbers than hot passion, more about logic than love, so what surprised me was how often successful business people actually use the words "passion" and "love" when they talk about their work. When Jack Welch was CEO of General Electric, he was asked if he liked his job, he said: "No, I don't like this job. I love this job". 

We can have passion for a profession. Kathleen Lane, chief strategist at WorkCard, says: "I've found a profession I love". She also says: "Stress isn't working 15 hours at a job you like. Stress is working 15 minutes at a job you dislike." 

We can have a passion for people. Nez Hallett III, CEO of Smart Wireless, says: "I used to be in sales, now I'm a CEO. I just love being around people." 

We can have passion for a product. James Dyson, a vacuum cleaner, says: "I love vacuum cleaners and I will love them until the day I die. Yup, when he dies, they just going to cremate him and suck up those ashes with a Dyson vacuum , and place it on the shelf.

We can have passion for a particular field. Anita Roddick, the great founder of The Body Shop, once said: "I love retailing, I love buying, selling and making connections." She also said: "I don't like systems, finalcial sheets or plans." Yes, no matter how much we love what we do, there's always going to be stuff we don't love. The trick is to make sure the stuff you don't love only takes up 20 percent of your time, and stuff you do love takes up 80. If it's the other way around, we're in the wrong job. 

Passion is sometimes mistaken for ambition. People call Donald Trump are ambitious, but he says: "I'm not ambitious. I just love what I do. And if you love what you do, you do a lot of stuff. And then people say: "Oh. You're ambitious"" 

The cold thing about passion is it turns underachieves into superachieves. I have long list of famous underachieves, like Albert Einstein, who people said would go nowhere when he was young. For instance, who said this, besides me? "I was sitting in my room being a depressed guy, trying to finger out what I was doing with my life". Turns out it was Bill Gates. 

Why it pays to work hard? - Richard St. John (P2)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6FvEwLBgBo

Boy, that was a wake-up call. He says: "I was very disappointed. I started working on my game the day after I was cut." And he soon became the hardest working player in basketball, who made fun of the other players who weren't working hard. And that hard work is what made him the greatest basketball player of all time. So I'd say the real gift isn't talent, it is the ability to work hard. And we tend to underestimate work and overestimate smarts, but in the end work wins over smarts. 

In fact many successful people aren't the smartest. They just work the hardest.  

Francois Parenteau, who Bussiness Week called the top independent analyst on Wall Street, said to me: "I'm certainly not that smart. I can't even remember my own zip code". But he also says: "Work is a bid part of my life. I think about investments pretty much 24 hours a day, seven days a week. 

Nez Hallet III is CEO of Smart Wireless. And I thought, that's ironic because he told me he's not that smart. He says: "I graduated from high school with a C average and college with a C minus average. But now, the smart PhDs are reporting to him. How did he do it? He said: "If you're going to be successful at anything, the key thing is to work hard."

I'm not smart. As proof, here is my actual 12th grade report card. It was the only one my parents ever kept. Don't ask me why they kept it, it's nothing to brag about. As you can see, I was a C student, not an A student. I don't think I'd even make it into the college these days. So how did I achieve some success and wealth? I just worked hard, many 60- to 80 hour weeks. And now, I know I'm not alone.

Thomas J. Stanley studied hundreds of millionares and he discovered most millionares weren't A students, didn't score high on tests and teachers didn't think they'd ever succeed. But they did succeed, because they worked hard. So the good news is if you are not the smartest, if you are a C student, not an A student, the really good news is you can still succeed. Because the word "success" has two C's and no A's. You can still succeed as long as you work hard. And what if you are smart? Well, I'm sorry, there's absolutely no hope for you! Because many smart people don't achieve as much success as they could, unfortunately, because they rest on their smarts and never learn to work hard. 

Jeong Kim president of Lucent Tezchnologies says: "People who are the smartest sometimes don't realize their full potential because things get too easy, so they don't push themselves hard. 

After a talk I gave at one of the world's top-10 bussiness schools, a man came up to me and said: "You know, when I got my MBA here a few years ago, I was one of the smartest people in the class. I thought I had it made. So after I graduated I sat back and I didn't work hard, and I went downhill. And now, at this point in my life, I've gone nowhere. I haven't achieved any success at all". He said: "Thanks for the wake-up call. Now I know what I need to do. I need to work"

So the bottom line is whether you're smart or not, whether you're talented or not, just keep working.