Wednesday, July 16, 2014

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25 Characteristics of an Alpha Male

Characteristics of a Real Man

The Alpha Male, the real man, a man’s man, a warrior, a stand-up guy. It doesn’t matter what you call him, he’s a leader, the guy others look to for motivation, inspiration, and often with a hint of jealousy. He’s the man women want, without inention the center of attention.
He’s the guy, the man.
Here’s 25 characteristics that make a man the alpha. Leave your additions (or subtractions) in the comments section.
1. The alpha male is persistent. There’s no quit in this man. He’s the tortose not the hare. He’s the last man standing.
2. The alpha male can defend himself and his family. He can handle himself with his fists, to put it another way.
3. The alpha male is in peak physical shape. He’s strong and athletic as well as aesthetically pleasing to the opposite sex.
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4. The alpha male is courageous. He doesn’t lack fear, rather, he accepts that it exists and faces it at every opportunity.
5. The alpha male can entertain. He has a sense of humor and can have a group of people hanging on his every word – he’s a good story teller.
6. The alpha male has stories to tell. He’s lived – and is living – a unique life. He’s made mistakes, but he’s able to find humor in them. He’s had adventures that everyone wants to hear about.
7. The alpha male can laugh at himself. This is an over-looked characteristic of an alpha male, but a ne
cessary one. You can’t make fun of the alpha male because he’ll join in, no one can make fun of him better than he can.
8. The alpha male is humble. Some of this comes from his ability to laugh at himself. No matter what he accomplishes, his head will never balloon, and if it does, he has the ware-with-all to come back down to earth before it gets out of hand.
9. The alpha male is learned, educated. A degree isn’t a prerequisite, but a thirst for knowledge is. He wants to learn, and he does. This helps him relate to people from every social and economic standing. He can converse intelligently with the business man and the preacher. The history buff and the sports nut.
10. The alpha male is a man’s man. He’s a hard guy not to like or want to have a beer with. He’s tough, often quiet, composed, but can joke and shoot the shit with anyone.
11. The alpha male knows the value of every word, he doesn’t talk simply to hear the sound of his own voice. His words are chosen carefully. He respects their power. Whether he’s writing or speaking, he doesn’t speak to be hear, he speaks when he has something of value to say. He’s never the loudest one in the room.
12. The alpha male has a purpose. This may be his most defining trait. Where many wander through life trying to find their Self, the alpha male is too busy creating his Self. Every day he does something to bring himself closer to his goal. He isn’t a wanderer, he’s going places; it’s so obvious that everyone around him can see it.
13. The alpha male is a hard worker. He knows that nothing great is accomplished without hard work and a definite purpose.
14. The alpha male is a warrior not a worrier. He understands that cetain things aren’t under his control. He does everything he can to control what hecan, but doesn’t worry about what he can’t. He’s not worried about tomorrow, he’s too busy working for today.
15. The alpha male doesn’t pick a fight, but he ends it if he’s in one. He isn’t a bully. He isn’t an emotional wreck that looks for a fight at every corner. But, if the logical thing to do is to fight because the situation calls for it, he will. He’ll also never hit a man when he’s down. He isn’t fighting to destroy, but to defend.
16. The alpha male has style. He takes pride in how he looks and people respect him for that. He also knows how to dress like a man. You’d never call the alpha male a metrosexual.
17. The alpha male knows who he is, his values govern his life. He doesn’t stray from these values, in fact he stands up for them. Even when he stands alone in what he believes is right, he digs his heels in and fights.
18. The alpha male knows how to treat a lady. He respects women, often because he’s had some great one’s in his life. He’s chivalrous.
He helps his lady at every chance. He helps her reach her dreams, all-the-while moving closer to attaining his own.
19. The alpha male isn’t a sucker. He isn’t a clinger. He doesn’t go out of his way to please everyone because that’s a futile endeavor. He won’t let a woman run his life. He’s his own man. Though he worships the ground his lady walks on, he knows how to pick ‘em. He won’t be with a control-freak or a jealous woman. He has the social intelligence to see that storm before it peeks it’s nasty little head.
20. The alpha male is a man of value. “Try not to become a man of success, but rather try to become a man of value.” Einstein knew that success is reached if you’re valuable to others. The alpha male is a man of value and values. He makes the lives of others better by being a part of them.
21. The alpha male helps others, he’s generous. He has his purpose, but he knows that life isn’t merely about accomplishments, but about leaving a legacy. That legacy is how he made others feel, and how he helps others accomplish their dreams.
22. The alpha male is a leader who leads by example. He doesn’t tell people how to live, but lives in the manner he sees as best to live.
23. Alpha males throughout history, Achilles, William Wallace, and Napoleon, saw opportunity where others saw failure. The alpha male will fail, but he won’t see failure as the end. He’s sees it as a necessary part of the experience, a stepping-stone. Knowing this allows him to try things others won’t, and to work harder when others usually quit.
24. The alpha male is stubborn. When he starts something he’s passionate about, no one can stop him or pull back on the reigns. He’s in it until the end. He’s also open-minded and willing to listen to other points of view. He knows he’s flawed and stubborn, so he gives way and learns from people who are better than him.
25. The alpha male doesn’t try to be an alpha male. That’s where so many fail. He is interested in life, in living. He’s fascinated by the world around him, in becoming the best man he can possibly become. He genuinely cares about people. He passionately works hard. He’s excited by life, by the opportunity that each day presents. He’s genuine in every facet of who he is. Each of the characteristics are possessed by him naturally, or will be as he grows as a man. Bred from curiosity, a genuine kindness, and a warrior’s heart, he is who he is, and all others follow him wherever he will lead them.

Tuesday, February 4, 2014

First monkeys with customized mutations born


First monkeys with customized mutations born

Milestone for targeted gene-editing technology promises better models for human diseases.
By Helen Shen
30 January 2014
Shared via http://www.nature.com/news/first-monkeys-with-customized-mutations-born-1.14611



Twin cynomolgus monkeys born in China are the first with mutations in specific target genes.


The ultimate potential of precision gene-editing techniques is beginning to be realised. Today, researchers in China report the first monkeys engineered with targeted mutations1, an achievement that could be a stepping stone to making more realistic research models of human diseases.

Xingxu Huang, a geneticist at the Model Animal Research Center of Nanjing University in China, and his colleagues successfully engineered twin cynomolgus monkeys (Macaca fascicularis) with two targeted mutations using the CRISPR/Cas9 system — a technology that hastaken the field of genetic engineering by storm in the past year. Researchers have leveraged the technique to disrupt genes in mice and rats2, 3, but until now none had succeeded in primates.

"This is an important step," says Feng Zhang, a synthetic biologist who was not involved in the study, but who has helped to develop CRISPR technology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. "It shows that the system is working."
Primate push

Transgenic mice have long dominated as models for human diseases, in part because scientists have honed a gene-editing method for the animals that uses homologous recombination — rare, spontaneous DNA-swapping events — to introduce mutations. The strategy works because mice reproduce quickly and in large numbers, but the low rates of homologous recombination make such a method unfeasible in creatures such as monkeys, which reproduce slowly.

"We need some non-human primate models," says Hideyuki Okano, a stem-cell biologist at Keio University in Tokyo. Human neuropsychiatric disorders can be particularly difficult to replicate in the simple nervous systems of mice, he says.

Previous attempts to genetically modify primates have relied on viral methods4, 5, which create mutations efficiently, but at unpredictable locations and in uncontrolled numbers. Prospects for primates brightened with the emergence of the CRISPR/Cas9 gene-editing system, which uses customizable snippets of RNA to guide the DNA-cutting enzyme Cas9 to the desired mutation site.

Huang and his team first tested the technology in a monkey cell line, disrupting each of three genes with 10–25% success. Encouraged, the scientists subsequently targeted the three genes simultaneously in more than 180 single-celled monkey embryos. Ten pregnancies resulted from 83 embryos that were implanted, one of which led to the birth of a pair with mutations in two genes: Ppar-γ, which helps to regulate metabolism, and Rag1, which is involved in healthy immune function.
'Interesting demonstration'

Stem-cell researcher Rudolf Jaenisch of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research in Cambridge, Massachusetts, calls the result an interesting demonstration, but says that it offers little scientific insight. "The next step is to see if we can learn anything from it," says Jaenisch, who pioneered the use of transgenic mice in the 1970s.

The combined mutations in Ppar-γ and Rag1 do not represent a particular disease syndrome, says Huang, although each gene is associated with human disorders.The group has yet to fully analyze the monkeys' condition, and must run further tests to assess whether the mutations occurred in all ot the animals' cells."Our first aim was to get it done, to get it to work," Huang says. But the finding suggests that researchers could one day model other human conditions involving multiple mutations.

The race is already on to create more CRISPR-modified monkeys, and with greater reliability. Zhang and his colleagues are working to optimize the technology for primate cells, in order to boost mutation efficiency. Okano's team is analyzing unpublished results from monkey models of autism and immune dysfunction, recently created with older gene-editing technologies; they, too, are now trying their luck with CRISPR. And Huang's group is expecting results from eight other pending pregnancies.

"There are a lot more things to do," says Huang.

ARTICLE SHARED VIA:
 http://www.nature.com/news/first-monkeys-with-customized-mutations-born-1.14611
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