Damodara

 

“It is natural that when a child becomes angry he can begin crying with false tears in his eyes. So Krishna did this, and biting His reddish lips with His teeth, He broke the pot with a stone, entered a room and began to eat the freshly churned butter.” (Shrila Prabhupada, Shrimad Bhagavatam, 10.9.6 Purport)

Beautiful Mother Yashoda, sitting peacefully, doing her household chores, was one day approached by her beloved son, her cherished darling who was the delight of Vrindavana

 

. He had just awoken from sleep and was hungry. Though she was churning butter at the time, her work didn’t preclude her from harboring motherly affection and tending to her child. She had the perfect setup going, seated wearing a nice sari and a belt and pulling on a rope to help her churn the butter. Nevertheless, despite the time and effort she had put in, she was not too busy to feed her child. The work was dedicated to her son to begin with, so why should she want to disappoint Him personally? After she began to feed her child, an urgent matter forced her to stop and get up for a moment. The darling Shyamasundara

 

 did not like this, for the mother’s attention was meant for Him. In retaliation, He did something that would both make His mother angry and satisfy His desire to eat at the same time.

A pot of milk boiling over in the kitchen was what caused Mother Yashoda to leave the scene. Her prioritization makes perfect sense. How long does it take to turn down the heat on the stove? Just get up for a second, fix the situation and then return to where you were. Plus, she had just interrupted her work to tend to Krishna, so hopefully the young child would understand that a moment’s interruption is not the end of the world. But Shri Krishna wanted exclusive devotion, for that is what He offered to His mom. He was not distracted by other obligations within the home, though He didn’t have any as a child. Regardless, a restless child is known to jump from one play activity to another. A blessed child is the one who knows the parent’s level of affection and reciprocates by allowing them to offer their love as often as possible. Krishna’s insistence that Mother Yashoda stop churning butter was actually for her benefit, as she was thinking about her beloved child at the time anyway.

The sweet mother had composed songs about His many pastimes, which included the slaying of wicked characters that had travelled to Gokula for nefarious purposes. Somehow Krishna managed to survive the attack of a witch named Putana, who had disguised herself as a beautiful woman coming to nurse the young child. The innocent Krishna also survived the attacks of a giant whirlwind and the breaking of a cart He was resting on during infancy. Trouble seemed to lurk around Krishna, yet He was unbreakable, giving delight to the residents through His invincibility.

It is natural for a mother to think of her beloved son, but with Yashoda she was so attached that she would compose songs on the fly and sing them out loud for pleasure. Since Krishna awoke and came on the scene during the time the mother was working and singing, we can guess that He was able to hear these songs, that the mother’s dip into the transcendental pool of nectar made up of her son’s pastimes became known to the object of service.

How was this possible? How could a young child even understand what His mother was singing about? The child Krishna was none other than the Supreme Personality of Godhead. That God can come to earth and play the role of an ordinary human being, that of a tiny infant no less, is very difficult to accept for many well-intentioned people. Lord Shiva

 

, the worshipable figure of the Vedic tradition tasked with destroying the creation at the appropriate time, was asked about these issues one time by Sati, his first wife. Sati is also known as Bhavani, which means Lord Shiva’s wife. She is the past incarnation of Mother Durga, who is forever Mahadeva’s consort.

One time Lord Shiva was anxious to hear about Lord Rama

 

, his ishta-deva, or desired worshipable figure. Though Mahadeva is worshiped by so many who are desirous of receiving boons, he himself is quite renounced. His only desire in life is to chant the holy name of Rama, which represents the Supreme Lord’s incarnation as the warrior prince of the same name who appeared on earth during the Treta Yuga, the second time period of creation. Wanting to hear more about Rama, Lord Shiva approached Agastya

 

 Rishi, a famous Vedic sage who witnessed many of Rama’s activities. Just by hearing from Agastya, Mahadeva felt so much delight.

Not satisfied, Lord Shiva then came upon the scene to get a quick glimpse of some of Rama’s activities. He did so very quietly so that no one would know he was there. If people found out he was watching Rama, then maybe Rama’s true position as the Supreme Lord would be revealed, which was not the purpose at the time. Seeing Rama, who was in a pitiful condition at the time because of His wife Sita having gone missing, Mahadeva felt tremendous happiness, so much so that he was dancing and of general good cheer. Mahadeva was happy just to see Rama. He paid no attention to exactly what the Lord was doing, for God works in mysterious ways, especially when He appears as an avatara

 

 and engages in activity.

Bhavani was quite puzzled by this. She knew of Rama’s glory, but couldn’t understand how He could be the Supreme Lord and appear on earth as a human being at the same time. Moreover, how could God be lamenting the loss of anyone? Why was her husband now so thrilled just upon seeing Him? Therefore she kindly asked Lord Shiva to explain further, to settle her doubts, and Mahadeva replied that the person she was watching was indeed the Supreme Lord and that He is never subject to illusion or the forces of material nature, despite what the external appearance may indicate. Everything is carefully arranged by the Lord to fulfill a purpose.

In the same vein, Lord Krishna’s interruption of Mother Yashoda during her churning of butter also served a purpose. Krishna’s appearance in Vrindavana gave pleasure to those truly deserving of it, those who had no other desire in life. The qualification of “pure” is often placed in front of devotion to distinguish the highest religious system versus other kinds. The purity is measured from the ultimate desire of the practicing individual. For instance, we may be devoted to someone, but there may be an underlying motive in the background. Pure devotion is present when there is no other desire except to remain devoted to the Supreme Lord in love.

As an example, in his Gitavali Goswami Tulsidas

 

 describes the scene in Ayodhya after Lord Rama returned home from His fourteen year exile and took over the control of the kingdom. It was Rama’s birthright to be king, and He was ready to be crowned to the delight of all the residents. Suddenly, however, everything was turned upside down and Rama was instead banished from the kingdom, with His younger brother Bharata given the throne. After an arduous time spent in the forest and a host of other events so nicely described in the Ramayana

 

, Rama finally returned home. Not only was He made the new king, but He acted in such a way that everyone was pleased. In ancient times, the kings would host public assemblies to answer the questions and concerns of the citizens. There were also days when the king would distribute whatever was asked of him. Any person could go up to the king on this day and get whatever they wanted. In describing this occasion, Tulsidas says that he is on the scene and approaching Rama for his gift. Tulsidas only asks to be devoted to Rama forever, and because of the nature of that day, the king is forced to agree to the poet’s request. That is pure devotion.

The residents of Vrindavana had the same level of purity, for Krishna was everything to them. Just the fact that the Supreme Lord descended to earth and remained in their land for such a long time shows that they could not have harbored any other desire in mind. When Mother Yashoda went to tend to the milk that was boiling over, Krishna became angry and broke the pot full of the butter she had so nicely churned. Faking tears in his eyes because of his anger, Krishna then went to another room and ate the butter. So not only did he spoil her work, but he began eating the butter that was to be used for other things.

In the aftermath, Yashoda chased Krishna with a stick and then tied Him to a mortar as punishment. The fact that Krishna would allow this to happen shows just how much He loves His mother. Celebrated thereafter as Damodara, Krishna is honored every year in the month ofKartika with candles offered by the devotees

 

 to His form bound up by the ropes of Yashoda’s motherly affection.

From Krishna’s behavior we see that devotion to God on the highest level flows in both directions. Just as the devotee is anxious to see Krishna, the Supreme Lord is eager to see the devotee, so much so that He’ll get angry if the worshiper’s attention is diverted elsewhere, even for a moment. Though Krishna broke the pot of butter in anger, He actually did Yashoda and countless future generations of listeners a huge favor. He let Yashoda know that He was not happy when she left Him, that He accepted and appreciated her love more than anyone else’s. It is not surprising therefore that such a sweetheart of a son would be honored by all types of transcendentalists.

With so many engagements available to the conditioned soul residing in the material world, there are many avenues to take that promote forgetfulness of Krishna. But if there is a sincere desire to remain connected with Him - a wish best revealed by regularly chanting

 

, “Hare Krishna Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare, Hare Rama Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare

 

” - Krishna Himself will ensure that the distractions are minimized, that the flow of devotional ecstasy can continue in the worshiper’s mood of choice.

In Closing:

In anger young Krishna cried tears that were fake,

Broke pot and butter to other room did He take.

Yashoda’s attention innocently diverted,

Tended to boiling milk pot so that crisis averted.

For Krishna’s stubborn anger there was no need,

Mother to Him milk would surely again feed.

Nevertheless showed anger because company she forsook,

Protested separation by the churned butter He took.

The pastimes with Krishna and His mother so lovely,

Hearing them gives heart delight always so timely.

Toyota Unveils High-tech Car Ahead of Show

                      Toyota unveiled a high-tech concept car Monday ahead of Japan's semi-annual auto show. Company president Akio Toyoda called the Fun-Vii a "smartphone on four wheels."

Wilder Amazonas 1_4 (Doku).mp4

Lipstick colour

Lip colour has the longest history of all makeup, and is still evolving every year. Nowadays, with the huge range of brands, colours, and textures, we find it difficult to select products that suit us. Many women refuse to wear anything but the one or two lipsticks they are accustomed to using. I believe that every woman should own an assortment of lipsticks in various shades, each of them looking great with specific attire and in certain situations.

All of us would like to have a collection of lipstick colours, but we don’t want to waste money on products we will never use. When choosing lipstick quality, you will need to consider the performance of the lipstick, and how it feels on your lips. Most importantly, you must select the right shade.

In this article you will learn the three aspects of colour, which are:

• hue,
• brightness, and
• transparency.

Hue

The hue of a lipstick may belong to the warm, cool, or neutral palette.

Warm colours look best on skins with warm undertones. Asian, some Hispanic, and warm black complexions look fabulous with salmon pink, coral, or golden brown lips.

Cool colours in pastel look more natural on women with skins that have cool undertones: pinkish European complexions, and black skins with red undertones. However, for stunning lips, a bright fuchsia or dark plum shade works best with warm-toned skin and hair.

Neutral colours are the most universal. Indeed, the most flattering lipstick shades for any complexion, pale or dark, will be on the boundary between the cool and warm palettes. Neutral lipstick colours, from soft peachy shades to poppy red, are also easy to wear with outfits in warm or cool shades.

If you have the confidence to wear the boldest looks, then try making your lipstick and outfit palettes complementary, instead of matching them. For example, the combination of a bright apricot lipstick with a navy blue suit, or fuchsia lips with an apple green dress, will create a stunning effect.

Brightness

The brightness of your lip colour will depend on the pigment density of your lipstick. However, lipsticks of the same brightness may look very different, depending on how strongly the lip colour contrasts with your skin tone. In this illustration, you can see how a single pastel or dark lipstick can appear different on light, medium, or dark skin.

For everyday makeup, choose a shade that corresponds to the natural colouration of your skin and hair. Your most flattering shades will sometimes change, depending on how tanned your skin is, and on your current hair colour.

To accentuate your mouth, your lipstick shade should contrast with your natural skin tone. Its brightness will depend on your attire, your personality, your mood, and the occasion. For a classy look, match your lip colour precisely to the hue and brightness of one of your accessories, or your jewellery.

To liven up your entire look, use a bright lipstick in any hue of red. The best shades of bright red are the hues between the warm and cool palettes. Dark reds are much easier to wear than bright reds, and offer a larger range of hues, from brownish reds to dark berries. Dark red lipsticks will also make your teeth appear whiter.

Coordinating with your outfit is also very important. I don’t like matching the brightness of makeup and attire: if both are bright, they will compete for attention; if mute, they will make you look washed out. You can match the hue of your lips with one of your outfit’s colours, but not the brightness.

Transparency

Lip colour can look transparent, sheer, or opaque, depending on its texture.

Transparent gloss is ideal for a young face; it makes the lips look full, sexy, and luscious. Gloss is also great for an instant lift when applied on top of your favourite lipstick, adding festiveness.

Sheer lipstick is ideal for natural, sensual lips, and suits women of every age group. Its texture is close to that of lip balm, making sheer lipstick moisturising and comfortable enough to wear every day. I also like the satiny finish, which creates luscious lips.

Opaque lipstick gives the best coverage and contains stronger pigments, making the colour appear more pronounced. Opaque lipstick is best for evening makeup, or for when you need to make a statement. Satiny, metallic, or matte finishes will create very different looks, from confident and bold to glamorous and sophisticated.

If you are creative and willing to experiment, blending different lip colours and textures may help to enrich your palette, but there are limitations: two products with differing transparencies may not blend well together, and blended colour is much harder to retouch because you must maintain the relative proportion.

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TIP: You should use Colosé Vitamin E Lip Balm Protector before application of any type of lipstick. It moisturizes and nourishes the lips preventing dryness and cracking. TIP: If you are over 40 we advise that you should avoid wearing matte lipsticks. You will look best with a little shine on your lips. Always use a lip liner since it acts as a barrier that keeps the lipstick from `bleeding'. TIP: Apply lip gloss over lipstick or alone. Gloss emphasizes and makes your lips appear to be fuller. TIP: Smooth lips will help your lipstick glide on and last longer. Use creamy lipsticks. If you are really into mattes, then apply lipbalm first and your lipstick will go on more freely. TIP: Use a creamy concealer all over your lips before you apply lip gloss as this will not only hold the color on for longer, it will mean that you will see exactly the color you chose to buy!

TIP: If you want your lipstick to last, use a pencil first as a base. Outline and color in your lips with pencil and apply your lipstick. TIP: To keep lips soft and smooth, exfoliate regularly and use a conditioning lip balm each morning and night. TIP: Exfoliate Lips - To exfoliate chapped lips, gently rub your lips in a circular motion with a toothbrush. Rinse your lips in warm water and smooth them over with a lip balm.

Strange New 'Species' of Ultra-Red Galaxy Discovered

This artist's conception portrays four extremely red galaxies that lie almost 13 billion light-years from Earth. Discovered using the Spitzer Space Telescope, these galaxies appear to be physically associated and may be interacting. One galaxy shows signs of an active galactic nucleus, shown here as twin jets streaming out from a central black hole. (Credit: David A. Aguilar (CfA))                                                                       Science Daily  — In the distant reaches of the universe, almost 13 billion light-years from Earth, a strange species of galaxy lay hidden. Cloaked in dust and dimmed by the intervening distance, even the Hubble Space Telescope couldn't spy it. It took the revealing power of NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope to uncover not one, but four remarkably red galaxies. And while astronomers can describe the members of this new "species," they can't explain what makes them so ruddy.

"We've had to go to extremes to get the models to match our observations," said Jiasheng Huang of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA). Huang is lead author on the paper announcing the find, which was published online by the Astrophysical Journal.

Spitzer succeeded where Hubble failed because Spitzer is sensitive to infrared light -- light so red that it lies beyond the visible part of the spectrum. The newfound galaxies are more than 60 times brighter in the infrared than they are at the reddest colors Hubble can detect.

Galaxies can be very red for several reasons. They might be very dusty. They might contain many old, red stars. Or they might be very distant, in which case the expansion of the universe stretches their light to longer wavelengths and hence redder colors (a process known as redshifting). All three reasons seem to apply to the newfound galaxies.

All four galaxies are grouped near each other and appear to be physically associated, rather than being a chance line-up. Due to their great distance, we see them as they were only a billion years after the Big Bang -- an era when the first galaxies formed.

"Hubble has shown us some of the first protogalaxies that formed, but nothing that looks like this. In a sense, these galaxies might be a 'missing link' in galactic evolution" said co-author Giovanni Fazio of the CfA.

Next, researchers hope to measure an accurate redshift for the galaxies, which will require more powerful instruments like the Large Millimeter Telescope or Atacama Large Millimeter Array. They also plan to search for more examples of this new "species" of extremely red galaxies.

"There's evidence for others in other regions of the sky. We'll analyze more Spitzer and Hubble observations to track them down," said Fazio.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., manages the Spitzer mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate. Science operations are conducted at the Spitzer Science Center at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center built Spitzer's Infrared Array Camera, which took the observations. The instrument's principal investigator is Giovanni Fazio of CfA.

Violent Video Games Alter Brain Function in Young Men

                                                                                 Science Daily  — Sustained changes in the region of the brain associated with cognitive function and emotional control were found in young adult men after one week of playing violent video games, according to study results presented by Indiana University School of Medicine researchers at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America.

This is the first time the IU researchers, who have studied the effects of media violence for more than a decade, have conducted an experimental study that showed a direct relationship between playing violent video games over an extended period of time and a subsequent change in brain regions associated with cognitive function and emotional control.

The controversy over whether or not violent video games are potentially harmful to players has been debated for many years, even making it as far as the Supreme Court in 2010. There has been little scientific evidence demonstrating that the games have a prolonged negative neurological effect.

"For the first time, we have found that a sample of randomly assigned young adults showed less activation in certain frontal brain regions following a week of playing violent video games at home," said Yang Wang, M.D., assistant research professor in the IU Department of Radiology and Imaging Sciences. "The affected brain regions are important for controlling emotion and aggressive behavior."

For the study, 28 healthy adult males, age 18 to 29, with low past exposure to violent video games were randomly assigned to two groups of 14. Members of the first group were instructed to play a shooting video game for 10 hours at home for one week and refrain from playing the following week. The second group did not play a video game at all during the two-week period.

Each of the 28 men underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) analysis at the beginning of the study, with follow-up exams at one and two weeks. During fMRI, the participants completed an emotional interference task, pressing buttons according to the color of visually presented words. Words indicating violent actions were interspersed among nonviolent action words. In addition, the participants completed a cognitive inhibition counting task.

The results showed that after one week of violent game play, the video game group members showed less activation in the left inferior frontal lobe during the emotional Stroop task and less activation in the anterior cingulate cortex during the counting Stroop task, compared to their baseline results and the results of the control group after one week. After the video game group refrained from game play for an additional week, the changes to the executive regions of the brain returned closer to the control group. Stroop task tests an individual's ability to control cognitive flexibility and attention.

"These findings indicate that violent video game play has a long-term effect on brain functioning," Dr. Wang said. "These effects may translate into behavioral changes over longer periods of game play."

Dr. Wang said that another important point of the study was that the young men were supplied with laptop computers and played at home in their "natural environment." Some of the previous research was done with players participating in a lab setting.

Coauthors are Tom Hummer, Ph.D., IU assistant research professor of psychiatry; William Kronenberger, Ph.D., associate professor of clinical psychology in the IU Department of Psychiatry; Kristine Mosier, D.M.D., Ph.D., IU associate professor of radiology; and Vincent P. Mathews, M.D., IU professor of neuroradiology. Drs. Wang, Hummer and Mosier are members of the IU Center for Neuroimaging.

The research is supported by the Center for Successful Parenting.

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Antibiotics in swine feed encourage gene exchange

A study to be published in the online journal mBio® on November 29 shows that adding antibiotics to swine feed causes microorganisms in the guts of these animals to start sharing genes that could spread antibiotic resistance.

Livestock farms use antibiotic drugs regularly, and not just for curing sick animals. Antimicrobial drugs are used as feed additives to boost animal growth, a profitable but controversial practice that is now banned in the European Union and under scrutiny here in the United States. Using antibiotics in animal feed saves farms money, but opponents argue the practice encourages antimicrobial resistance among bacteria that could well be consumed by humans. Today, livestock producers in the U.S. use an estimated 24.6 million pounds of antimicrobials for nontherapeutic purposes every year. The U.S. Government Accountability Office recently urged the federal government to follow up on plans to evaluate the impacts of the use of antibiotics as growth promoters.

The study by Heather Allen and her colleagues at the USDA National Animal Disease Center (NaDC) in Ames, Iowa, adds to the sum of knowledge about what happens to the microorganisms that populate animal digestive tracts when they are exposed to low, persistent levels of antibiotics. The researchers studied how two in-feed antibiotic formulations affect prophages, segments of DNA found in bacteria that can encode antibiotic resistance genes and other genes that bacteria may use.

Prophages can cut themselves out of the larger chromosome of bacterial DNA in a process called induction, then replicate and package themselves as viruses. These viruses explode the cell from the inside then move on to infect other organisms and deliver their genes.

Allen, who is lead author on the study, says when pigs were fed antibiotics, the actual numbers of antibiotic resistance genes carried by the phages remained steady, but the microorganisms still reacted to the presence of antibiotics. Prophages underwent a significant increase in induction when exposed to antibiotics, indicating that medicating the animals led to increased movement of prophage genes among gut bacteria.

“Induction of the prophages is showing us that antibiotics are stimulating gene transfer,” says Allen. “This is significant because phages have previously been shown to carry bacterial fitness genes such as antibiotic resistance genes.”

Studies that explore the impacts of in-feed antibiotics most often focus on the bacterial residents of the gut, according to Allen, but phages and other viruses move a significant amount of genetic information around the community. This makes changes in prophage induction an important collateral effect of antibiotic treatment, she says. Resistance genes are the unit of currency among microbes experiencing the duress of an antibiotic, so following the movement of genes is arguably more important than following certain changes in bacterial communities. And if bacteria in humans acquire resistance genes from animals, there can be serious health consequences.

“What’s important is the transfer of a gene that could get into the wrong place at the wrong time,” says Allen. “Increased gene transfer is a critical event in the evolution of gut bacteria.”

____________

mBio® is an open access online journal published by the American Society for Microbiology to make microbiology research broadly accessible. The focus of the journal is on rapid publication of cutting-edge research spanning the entire spectrum of microbiology and related fields. It can be found online at http://www.mbio.asm.org.

Socioeconomic status may explain racial disparities in diet, exercise, and weight

by Biomechanism                                                                                                                                  Large disparities exist in obesity and other chronic diseases across racial/ethnic groups in the United States. Are racial differences in diet, exercise, and weight status related to better knowledge about healthy eating and awareness of food-related health risks? Or are they more closely related to differences in socioeconomic status (SES)?

A new study published in the December issue of the Journal of the American Dietetic Association finds that people with a lower socioeconomic status are more likely to be overweight, regardless of racial/ethnic background, and that the level of nutritional knowledge and health awareness did not lead to significant racial differences in weight and diet.

“Our findings suggest that disparities in obesity in the United States may be more affected by the broader social environment,” said authors Youfa Wang, MD, PhD, MS, director of the Johns Hopkins Global Center for Childhood Obesity and associate professor of International Health and Epidemiology, and Xialoi Chen, MD, PhD, MPH, assistant scientist in the Department of International Health at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, MD. “Poor quality retail food environments in disadvantaged neighborhoods, in conjunction with limited individual economic resources, contribute to increased risk of obesity within ethnic minorities and socioeconomically disadvantaged populations.”

The authors hypothesized that between-group differences in nutrition- and health-related psychosocial factors, including nutrition knowledge and beliefs, are important contributors to the large racial/ethnic and socioeconomic differences observed in U.S. adults’ dietary intakes, exercise, and obesity. They analyzed nationally representative data collected from 4,356 individuals who had participated in the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Continuing Survey of Individual Food Intakes, and who had completed the Diet and Health Knowledge Survey, which asks about self-perceptions of nutritional intake, awareness of the relationship between diet and health, perceived importance of following nutritional guidelines, and other questions related to health and diet.

Each participant was asked 24 questions to evaluate nutrition and health-related psychosocial factors (NHRPF). SES was assessed using education and household income. The authors analyzed the relationship between NHRPF and SES with self-reported dietary intake, diet quality (measured by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Healthy Eating Index [HEI]), exercise participation, body mass index (BMI), and overweight or obesity. Changes in racial/ethnic differences in weight status were compared with diet and exercise participation.

In general, compared to non-Hispanic whites, non-Hispanic blacks had higher BMI and scored lower on the HEI, and were less likely to participate in exercise. Hispanics scored higher on the HEI. The racial and ethnic differences in diet and BMI changed little after controlling for NHRPF. But when SES was controlled for, the black–white differences in HEI became smaller and the white–Hispanic differences became greater.

“Our study shows several important findings that could help enhance the understanding of the complex factors that affect disparities in diet, exercise, and obesity across ethnic and SES groups,” commented Dr. Wang. “Different from what we expected, few of the racial/ethnic differences in diet, exercise, and weight status were explained by health- and nutrition-related psychosocial factors. But SES explained a considerable portion of the disparities.”

“The underlying causes of ethnic disparities in eating, exercise, and obesity in the United States are complicated. More well-designed studies with vigorous and comprehensive assessment of related factors are needed to help advance understanding.”

__________

The article is “How Much of Racial/Ethnic Disparities in Dietary Intakes, Exercise, and Weight Status Can Be Explained by Nutrition- and Health-Related Psychosocial Factors and Socioeconomic Status among US Adults?” by Y. Wang and X. Chen. It appears in the  Journal of the American Dietetic Association, Volume 111, Issue 12 (December 2012) published by Elsevier.

Cell molecule identified as central player in the formation of new blood vessels

 by Biomechanism                                                                                                                           Scientists at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine have identified a cellular protein that plays a central role in the formation of new blood vessels. The molecule is the protein Shc (pronounced SHIK), and new blood vessel formation, or angiogenesis, is seriously impaired without it.

The study, which appeared online November 16, 2011 in the journal Blood, was led by associate professor of cell and molecular physiology at UNC, Ellie Tzima, PhD, who is also a member of the university’s Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center and the McAllister Heart Institute.

Control endothelial cells embedded in fibrin gel sprout and form new capillary-like tubes whereas Shc knockout endothelial cells fail to form new vessels. This experiment models angiogenesis in vivo where endothelial cells must sprout off of a parent vessel in order to make a new blood vessel during development, wound healing and tumor growth. Credit: Tzima Lab, UNC-Chapel Hill

“Angiogenesis is the formation of new blood vessels from existing blood vessels and it’s a process that’s important during embryonic development and in the development of diseases such as cancer,” Tzima said. “So understanding the molecular mechanisms of how blood vessels form is important from the basic science perspective and for understanding and treating disease.”

Vascular networks form and expand by sprouting, similar to the way trees grow new branches. The process allows fresh oxygen and nutrients to be delivered to tissues, whether in a developing embryo or a cancerous tumor. Blood vessel formation is spurred by a variety of chemical signals that zoom along complex pathways. Some are cues that come from growth factors, others from the tissue matrix that the cells sit on. This extracellular matrix (ECM) serves the cell in a number of ways, such as supporting the cell’s structure, helping to regulate cell-to-cell communication.

The protein Shc, is known to regulate a number of important molecular signaling pathways, but its role in angiogenesis has remained unknown until now, Tzima says. She also points out that Shc is evolutionarily conserved, which indicates its essential importance across species.

“We hypothesized that Shc would be the central player that accepts signals from all of the stimuli that have been previously shown to be important for regulating blood vessel formation and would process them and regulate the cell’s response,” Tzima said. “And that is what we found – that Shc coordinates signals, those coming from growth factors as well as from the extracellular matrix.”

Tzima suggests that we imagine the cell as a complex highway network with electronic toll plazas through which cars with a transponder can whiz at highway speeds without slowing down. The system works because the transponder’s personalized signal is relayed to a computer system that calculates the toll and charges the car’s account in a flash. “Shc is the toll plaza, the checkpoint through which signals crucial to blood vessel formation must pass and get coordinated for proper angiogenesis to occur.”

In the study, Tzima and her team found that Shc is required for angiogenesis in zebrafish, mouse and human endothelial cell culture models of blood vessel formation.

“The animal studies gave us the broad perspective that Shc may be important to this process,” said graduate student and study first-author Daniel T. Sweet. “Zebrafish and mice have previously been used to explore blood vessel formation in vivo. We found that without Shc, blood vessel formation is impaired.”

“Then for a closer look we used a cell culture model to determine which endothelial cell processes require Shc for angiogenesis. We found it mediates signals from growth factor receptors and extracellular matrix receptors,” Sweet said. “Shc is important for the crosstalk between these processes, meaning that they need to “talk” to each other in order to properly form a tube or to sprout and migrate. That’s the exciting thing about this paper.”

Tzima notes that elegant genetic models of mice have been used to understand important cellular processes, including angiogenesis. “But if you want to think about designing therapeutics it becomes much more important to understand the molecular mechanism. And this was the strength of the study. We went all the way down to molecular interactions that allowed us to figure out this new angiogenesis pathway.”

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UNC co-authors with Tzima and Sweet are Zhongming Chen, David M. Wiley, and Victoria L. Bautch. The research was supported by grants from the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, American Heart Association and Ellison Medical Foundation.