Right time for 'end-of-life' talk

"Previous studies have shown that patients who discuss their end-of-life care preferences with a physician are more likely to choose palliative, comfort-focused care over aggressive measures, and [to] receive hospice or other care consistent with their wishes. But studies haven't looked at the timing of these discussions, or where and with whom they occur,” says the study's lead author, Assistant Professor of Pediatrics Jennifer Mack of Harvard Medical School and Dana-Farber/Children's Hospital Cancer Center.
Credit: Amanda Swinhart/Harvard Staff Photographer

The vast majority of patients with incurable lung or colorectal cancer talk with a physician about their options for care at the end of life, but often not until late in the course of their illness, according to a new study by Harvard-affiliated Dana-Farber Cancer Institute investigators published in the Feb. 7 issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine.

The researchers found that such belated conversations tend to occur under particularly stressful conditions — when patients have been admitted to a hospital for acute care. And the doctor who shares in the end-of-life care talk is often a hospital physician rather than an oncologist who has treated the patient for much of his or her illness.

Together, these circumstances may deprive patients of the opportunity for extended reflection and deliberation that would have been possible months earlier, when the conversation also could have occurred under less trying and hectic conditions, the authors suggest.

“Previous studies have shown that patients who discuss their end-of-life care preferences with a physician are more likely to choose palliative, comfort-focused care over aggressive measures, and [to] receive hospice or other care consistent with their wishes. But studies haven’t looked at the timing of these discussions, or where and with whom they occur,” says the study’s lead author, Jennifer Mack of Dana-Farber/Children’s Hospital Cancer Center. Mack is also an assistant professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School (HMS).

The new study, which involved 2,155 patients with stage IV (highly advanced) lung or colorectal cancer, found that 73 percent of the patients had a conversation about end-of-life care with a physician, according to medical records or an interview with the patient or a companion. Among the nearly 1,000 patients who passed away and whose records document an end-of-life care discussion with a physician, the median time of those discussions was 33 days before death.

Other findings pertain to the location of those discussions and the type of physician involved. Of the more than 1,000 end-of-life care discussions in medical records, 55 percent occurred in the hospital. Oncologists documented end-of-life care talks with only 27 percent of their terminally ill patients in the study.

Data for the study was provided by the Cancer Outcomes Research and Surveillance Consortium (CanCORS), a multi-region, population- and health system-based study of more than 10,000 patients with lung or colorectal cancer. Researchers interviewed patients at two time points and analyzed their medical records 15 months after diagnosis.

“It’s encouraging to see such a high percentage of patients had end-of-life care conversations with a physician,” Mack says. “There’s a concern, though, that so many of these talks are taking place late in the trajectory of the disease.”

Previous studies had estimated that fewer than 40 percent of patients with advanced cancer had end-of-life care discussions. Mack theorizes that this lower figure may reflect that earlier studies didn’t record end-of-life talks that took place shortly before patients’ death.

Other research has suggested that physicians may delay end-of-life care discussions because of a natural reluctance to broach the subject, or because it conflicts with physicians’ problem-solving, hope-giving image. While such motivations are understandable, Mack says, they may work to patients’ detriment if they postpone the conversations too long.

Mack and her colleagues are planning future studies to examine the quality and content of end-of-life care conversations, and then explore whether having such talks earlier in the course of illness can benefit patients.

The study’s senior author is HMS Professor of Medicine Jane Weeks of Dana-Farber. Co-authors include Angel Cronin and Nathan Taback of Dana-Farber; Haiden Huskamp and Nancy Keating of Harvard Medical School; Jennifer Malin of the University of California, Los Angeles; and Craig Earle of the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research.

The study was funded by grants from the National Cancer Institute, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, the American Cancer Society, and the National Palliative Care Research Center.

More information: http://www.annals.org/

 

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This story is published courtesy of the Harvard Gazette

 

, Harvard University's official newspaper. For additional university news, visitHarvard.edu

 

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Robert Karl Stonjek

Anyone can learn to be more inventive, cognitive researcher says

 

There will always be a wild and unpredictable quality to creativity and invention, says Anthony McCaffrey, a cognitive psychology researcher at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, because an "Aha moment" is rare and reaching it means overcoming formidable mental obstacles. But after studying common roadblocks to problem-solving, he has developed a toolkit for enhancing anyone's skills.

McCaffrey believes his Obscure Features Hypothesis (OFH) has led to the first systematic, step-by-step approach to devising innovation-enhancing techniques to overcome a wide range of cognitive obstacles to invention. His findings appear now in an early online issue of Psychological Science. McCaffrey, a post doctoral research fellow at the Center for e-Design at UMass Amherst and Virginia Tech, recently won a two-year, $170,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to turn his technique into software with a user-friendly graphical interface. Initial users will likely be engineers.

Looking at more than 100 significant modern and 1,000 historical inventions, McCaffrey analyzed how successful inventors overcame various cognitive obstacles to uncover the key obscure information needed to solve problems. He found that almost all innovative solutions follow two steps, as articulated by the OFH: Noticing an infrequently-seen, obscure feature and second, building a solution based on that feature.

"I detected a pattern suggesting that something everyone else had overlooked often became the basis of an inventive solution," he says. So the cognitive psychologist with degrees in computer science and philosophy, who says all three disciplines "have come in very handy to approach this from different angles," set out to study aspects of human perception and cognition that inhibit our noticing obscure features.

"I felt that if I could understand why people overlook certain things, then develop techniques for them to notice much more readily what they were overlooking, I might have a chance to improve creativity."

Psychologists use the term "functional fixedness" to describe the first mental obstacle McCaffrey investigated. It explains, for example, how one person finding burrs stuck to his sweater will typically say, "Ugh, a burr," while another might say, "Hmmm, two things lightly fastened together. I think I'll invent Velcro!" The first view is clouded by focusing on an object's typical function.

To overcome functional fixedness, McCaffrey sought a way to teach people to reinterpret known information about common objects. For each part of an object, the "generic parts technique" (GPT) asks users to list function-free descriptions, including its material, shape and size. Using this, the prongs of an electrical plug can be described in a function-free way to reveal that they might be used as a screwdriver, for example.

"The trick is how to unconceal the features relevant to your purposes," McCaffrey points out. The result of creating the function-free parts list is a tree diagram in which the description of each part does not imply a use, helping subjects see beyond common functions of any object and its parts.

Using "insight problems" involving common objects because they require no special engineering knowledge, McCaffrey designed an experiment to test whether GPT improved problem solving in a group of 14 undergraduates trained in GPT compared to a control group of 14 who were not. Both groups were given insight problems commonly used in psychological testing, plus new ones designed by McCaffrey's colleagues.

Overall, the GPT group solved 67.4 percent more problems than the control group, a dramatic and statistically significant improvement in performance. In a follow-up study asking subjects to list features for the same objects (independent of a problem), GPT-trained subjects listed the key obscure feature required for the solution 75 percent of the time compared to 27 percent for controls. This suggests it is not mere exposure to problems but rather the GPT that leads to uncovering the key obscure feature more often.

Two ideas from his philosophy background helped him think about such problems in a broad way, McCaffrey says. In Nietzsche, McCaffrey found his broad definition of "feature" that doesn't limit a theory of creativity. From Heidegger, he borrowed the notion of "unconcealment," the idea that any object can have an unlimited number of features that are gradually unconcealed within an endless array of contexts.

"I was an elementary school teacher for several years," McCaffrey adds. "With these ideas bubbling around in my brain, I gave my students a steady stream of puzzles and observed carefully when they were getting stuck." Eventually, he decided it was time for him to formally and scientifically study how people overcome these mental obstacles.

"I want to help people to notice things consciously that they might not otherwise see, and remain open to the possibilities. Noticing is one thing, and building on it or connecting it to other things is the next step. Some of this can be learned and we now have a discipline for it." He is already looking at other obstacles and plans to publish a series of innovation-enhancing techniques to address as many as two dozen distinct creativity blocks caused by the normal function of our perceptual and cognitive systems.

Provided by University of Massachusetts at Amherst

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Obesity is associated with altered brain function

 

Glucose metabolism of the caudate nucleus in the midbrain (A) was significantly higher in obese versus lean individuals (B).

In most western countries the annual increase in the prevalence and the severity of obesity is currently substantial. Although obesity typically results simply from excessive energy intake, it is currently unclear why some people are prone to overeating and gaining weight.

Because the central nervous system is intimately involved in processing of hunger signals and controlling food intake, it is possible that the cause of weight gain and obesity might be in the brain.

Researchers at the University of Turku and Aalto University have now found new evidence for the role of the brain in obesity. The researchers measured the functioning brain circuits involved in with multiple brain imaging methods.

The results revealed that in obese versus lean individuals, brain glucose metabolism was significantly higher in the brain's striatal regions, which are involved in processing of rewards. Moreover, obese individual's reward system responded more vigorously to food pictures, whereas responses in the frontal cortical regions involved in cognitive control were dampened.

"The results suggest that obese individuals' brains might constantly generate signals that promote eating even when the body would not require additional energy uptake," says Adjunct Professor Lauri Nummenmaa from the University of Turku.

"The results highlight the role of the brain in obesity and weight gaining. The results have major implications on the current models of obesity, but also on development of pharmacological and psychological treatments of obesity," Nummenmaa says.

The participants were morbidly obese individuals and lean, healthy controls. Their brain glucose metabolism was measured with positron emission tomography during conditions in which the body was satiated in terms of insulin signalling. Brain responses to pictures of foods were measured with functional magnetic resonance imaging.

The research is funded by the Academy of Finland, Turku University Hospital, University of Turku, Åbo Akademi University and Aalto University.

The results were published on January 27th, 2012 in scientific journal PLoS ONE.

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Tell me how you are -- and I know how long you will live

The way people rate their health determines their probability of survival in the following decades. Researchers from the Institute of Social and Preventive Medicine at the University of Zurich demonstrate that for ratings ranging from "excellent," "good," "fair," and "poor" to "very poor," the risk of mortality increases steadily – independently of such known risk factors as smoking, low education levels or pre-existing diseases.

How would you rate your health? This is a question that often appears on questionnaires. The answer is linked to the respondent's probability of survival or death. Needless to say, a pessimistic assessment goes hand in hand with an increased risk of illness or death. It can be assumed that on average people who rate their health as poor have an unhealthier lifestyle, are often in a fragile state of health or are already sick. However, earlier studies that only monitored the participants for a few years after the survey reveal that the correlation persists even if these factors are taken into account.

Self-rating more permanent ...

Now, researchers from the Institute of Social and Preventive Medicine at the University of Zurich demonstrate that self-rated health is also linked to the probability of survival or death over a long period of more than thirty years. In the study, which was conducted in Switzerland, men who rated their health as "very poor" were 3.3 times more likely to die than men of the same age who rated their health as "excellent", and the risk of death was 1.9 times higher in women who rated their health as "very poor" than for those who rated it as "excellent". Here, the risk increased steadily from an optimistic to a pessimistic rating: people in "excellent" health had better chances of survival than those in "good" health, the latter better chances than those in a "fair" state of health, and so on. "The steady increase in risk and the long time of over thirty years between the self-rating and the end of the observation period render it practically impossible for medical history or a dark foreboding to be main causes of the correlation observed," explains head of the study Matthias Bopp.

... risk factors taken into consideration

Even taking education levels, marital status, tobacco-related strains, medical history, the use of medication, blood pressure and blood glucose into account, the correlation between self-rated health and mortality only weakened marginally. The difference in the risk of death between the best and the worst rating was still 1:2.9 in men and 1:1.5 in women. "Our results indicate that people who rate their state of health as excellent have attributes that improve and sustain their health," concludes specialist in preventive medicine David Fäh. "These might include a positive attitude, an optimistic outlook and a fundamental level of satisfaction with one's own life."

The results of the study support the broad concept of health advocated by the World Health Organization not as the absence of disease, but rather as complete physical, mental and social wellbeing. "Good doctors should therefore not just look for the presence of risk factors or diseases, but also check which health resources their patients have and boost and consolidate them if need be," says David Fäh.

More information: Bopp M, Braun J, Gutzwiller F, Faeh D. Health Risk or Resource? Gradual and Independent Association Between Self-rated Health and Mortality Persists Over 30 years. February 9, 2012. PLoS ONE 2012. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0030795

 

Provided by University of Zurich

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Gap between Scottish and English suicide rates widens

A new study has revealed the widening gap in suicide rates between Scotland and England & Wales due to a large extent to the number of young Scottish men taking their lives.

The research, carried out by the Universities of Manchester and Edinburgh and the Medical Research Council Social and Public Health Sciences Unit in Glasgow, examined suicide rates north and south of the border between 1960 and 2008.

The team found that the suicide rate in both men and women was in fact lower in Scotland until around 1968 when it overtook the rate in England & Wales. Suicides among men continued to rise on both sides of the border until the early 1990s when rates in England & Wales began to fall and the gap between north and south widened markedly.

"Our research reveals that the suicide rate in Scotland compared to that in England & Wales has three distinct phases," said joint lead researcher Dr Roger Webb, from The University of Manchester's Centre for Suicide Prevention.

"Up until the late 1960s, the suicide rate in England was always higher than that in Scotland, but around 1968 the rates 'crossed over' with Scotland having the higher rate in both genders. In phase two, between 1969 and 1991, the rates remained steadily higher in Scotland than in England, but from 1992 onwards we see a third phase where the suicide mortality gap between the two countries widened markedly."

The study, published online by The British Journal of Psychiatry today (Thursday), looked at suicide trends by gender and by age group (15-44, 45-64 and 65-plus years), as well as method of suicide.

Dr Webb said: "The research clearly indicates that much of the divergence in the national suicide rates has been driven by a marked increase in risk among Scottish young adults, especially males, and deaths by hanging in this group in particular. Our analyses also suggest that the difference in risk over time between countries is unlikely to be explained by cause of death classification differences.

"However, one of the key changes in methods used during the study period was the marked increase in suicide by hanging, particularly among young men in Scotland. This is of particular concern as hanging has high case fatality and is difficult to prevent, except within institutional settings. It has been proposed that a public information campaign about hanging would be the most useful way to tackle the increase of suicide deaths by this method."

Joint lead researcher Professor Stephen Platt, from the University of Edinburgh's Centre for Population Health Sciences, added: "This study adds to our understanding about patterns of suicide in Great Britain by producing sound evidence on divergences in long-term trends in Scotland compared to England & Wales. In a future companion paper we will suggest explanations for the persisting higher rate of suicide in Scotland."

More information: 'Trends in national suicide rates for Scotland and for England & Wales, 1960-2008,' British Journal of Psychiatry.

Provided by University of Manchester

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Tackling financial exploitation of elderly people

Professionals who are in close contact with elderly people could soon be in a better position to spot if they are being financially exploited, for example through a lottery scam or by a deceitful relative draining the bank account, thanks to a pioneering new study funded by the UK Research Councils' New Dynamics of Ageing programme (NDA).

Researchers have started to untangle the complex decision-making process that professionals go through when confronted with an elderly person whose financial situation raises suspicions that exploitation may be taking place. The research was led by psychologist Professor Mary Gilhooly of Brunel University, who worked with colleagues from Brunel and the universities of Hertfordshire, Plymouth, Northumbria and East Anglia.

"The number of frail and mentally impaired older people in society is increasing, and there are growing challenges with money handling," said Professor Gilhooly. "There are many stories of elderly people being financially exploited through scams or relatives - although there has not been enough academic research on the issue. "

The researchers wanted to find out how professionals who deal with the elderly make decisions relating to potential financial exploitation – what information they use, how they weigh it up, and whether they decide to act or not.

"It is a complex process," said Professor Gilhooly. "First you have to notice that something is wrong, then you have to decide whether it is abuse and this is clearly not straightforward. You need to make the decision whether to do something or not, and if you do decide to intervene you need the appropriate skills. Things could go wrong at any one of these points."

The researchers focused on three groups of professionals: healthcare workers, social care workers and bankers. The professionals were presented with a range of scenarios based on real-life cases of financial abuse and questioned on how they would respond and what 'cues' would raise their suspicions of something being amiss.

"We found that while there may be multiple cues that could be taken into account when considering the likelihood that financial exploitation is taking place, only two or three are really important," said Professor Gilhooly.

Amongst social care and health professionals only two factors had a significant influence on the certainty of abuse: 

• The older person's mental capacity. 
  In cases where the older person was more confused and forgetful, this increased suspicion that financial abuse was taking place.
• The nature of the financial problem. 
  Financial problems where building work had been paid for but had not been carried out were seen as the strongest indicator of abuse. Cases where there was very little money for day-to-day necessities were given the lowest certainty of abuse.

Amongst banking and finance professionals, three case features significantly influenced certainty of financial abuse: 

• The nature of the financial problem. 
  Certainty of abuse was highest when the financial problem involved a customer asking to transfer money overseas to claim a cash prize. Cases where the bank account was unexpectedly overdrawn were rated the lowest certainty of abuse.
• The older person's mental capacity. 
  In cases where the older person was more confused and forgetful, there was increased suspicion that financial abuse was taking place.
• Person in charge of the money. 
  Banking and financial professionals were less certain if financial abuse was occurring if the older person was in charge of his or her own finances.

"By systematically analysing how these decisions are arrived at, such as is exploitation taking place and should we act upon it, should allow a better understanding of the most important signs to look out for and then how best to tackle the issue," said Professor Gilhooly. "We think that the case studies we devised could be useful training tools." A follow-up study sponsored by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) has recently been launched to investigate the potential of online training of professionals in understanding these various cues.

Provided by Economic & Social Research Council

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Cancer’s First Step

A single mutant cell breaks free of its neighbors in the early stages of cancer development.

By Megan Scudellari |

Epithelial cells Wikimedia Commons, John Schmidt

Normal, healthy tissues regularly suppress the growth of tumors, preventing cancerous cells from proliferating and metastasizing. Yet how this process happens on a molecular level has largely remained a mystery. Now researchers have presented one model of how the local environment regulates and prevents the expansion of a single mutant cell into a tumor.

The finding, published this week in Nature, confirms past studies that show cancer is not simply a product of the buildup of DNA mutations in a cell, but rather is dependent on the architecture of a cell’s local environment.

“It’s definitely an interesting phenomena,” says Douglas Brash

 

, who studies skin cancer at Yale University and was not involved in the research. “This paper affirms that cancer is not a cell autonomous process; that the neighborhood really matters.”

Past experiments demonstrated that embryos can suppress tumors. In one classic study

 

, for example, injection of a tumor-causing virus rapidly induced tumors in the wings of hatched chicks but not in 4-day-old chick embryos. But there have been few experiments examining the phenomenon on a molecular level in tissue culture.

Joan Brugge

 

 and Cheuk Leung at Harvard Medical School used a 3D cell culture of human mammary epithelial cells to examine what happens to a single oncogene-expressing cell in a tissue-like environment. The researchers used viral vectors to over-express oncogenes, which had been previously associated with epithelial cancer, one at a time in single cells in the 3D structure. Overexpression of Myc, a master transcription factor, or mutant activated AKT1, which perturbs cell checkpoints, did not result in the proliferation of the cell. “We found that majority of the oncogenes were unable to proliferate as single cells in the context of a normal, growth-arrested structure,” says Brugge.

But cells that overexpressed ERBB2—a cell receptor encoded by a gene that is amplified in 30 percent of breast tumors—moved into the center of the tissue culture, an open space called the lumen. There, freed from its normal neighbors, the single mutant cell began to proliferate.

Through additional experiments, the researchers found that ERBB2 expression affects extracellular matrix proteins, disrupting local cell-matrix attachments and allowing the cell to break free and move into the unrestricted space of the lumen. When the ERBB2 cell’s ability to move to the lumen was blocked, it remained next to neighboring cells and was no longer able to proliferate. They also found that simply by weakening cell-cell connections in the tissue, mutants expressing other oncogenes that were previously benign, including activated AKT1, were able to move into the lumen and proliferate. “The geography of a mutant cell’s neighbors is affecting whether the mutant cell moves to a different part of the tissue,” says Brash.

Next, Brugge plans to investigate how mature neighboring cells prevent single mutated cells from proliferating and if other factors in the environment, such as immune cells, influence the fate of the mutated cell. “We want to understand the nature of the suppressive effect of normal mature structures,” she says.

C. Leung et al., “Outgrowth of single oncogene-expressing cells from suppressive epithelial environments,” Nature

 

, doi:10.1038/nature10826, 2012.

Source: TheScientist
http://the-scientist.com/2012/02/08/cancers-first-step/

 

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Robert Karl Stonjek

The Immeasurable

“Every individual person can be measured, but Krishna has already shown that although He also is an individual, the entire cosmic manifestation is within His mouth. All these points considered, Krishna cannot be measured. How then did Yashoda want to measure Him and bind Him? We must conclude that this took place simply on the platform of pure transcendental love. This was the only cause.” (Shrila Prabhupada, Shrimad Bhagavatam, 10.9.13-14 Purport) Take the largest object you can imagine and then try to keep in mind its size. This exercise is a little difficult considering the fact that there are land masses so great in scope that you can’t appreciate the impression they make unless you have a bird’s eye view from an airplane or other vehicle flying high above. Not until you see something with your own eyes can you be truly awe-inspired. This explains the purpose for sight-seeing, travelling to landmarks and world wonders to see the scenes in question for only a few brief moments. The experience doesn’t last long, so one might even say that it is easier to just look at the same scenes in pictures, for in either case the association with the object will be temporary. But we like to experience awesome things in person so that their wonder can truly make an impression. Whatever it is we think is the greatest is actually minute in comparison to the land mass that is the earth. And then the earth is puny compared to the many other planets existing in this solar system. Then all the planets themselves can’t compare to the sun, which is so powerful that we can’t even get close to it. The sun is thousands of miles away, yet even from that distance it has such a tremendous effect on us. The wonder of space is noticed by the size and scope of physical objects, but there is also time. Look at old pictures of yourself and you can’t imagine how strange the time period shown in them was. Then see and hear about the period of time on earth prior to your birth. Again, the feelings are strange. “What did people do back then? What a great time it must have been? I would love to go back and live through that.” While it may seem interesting, the recent past, perhaps one hundred years ago, is nothing in comparison to the infinitely large time factor. It operates in both directions: past and future. Think of the environment around you right now. In one hundred years everything will seem strange to the people living on earth. They will yearn to travel back in time to what you consider the present. Take the full breadth of time and space and you get a slight idea of Lord Krishna’s position with respect to the world. As the Supreme Personality of Godhead, Krishna is unmanifest. This means that from our perspective we cannot see how large and pervasive His energy is. It is said that the deity    is the authorized object of worship for the fallen souls in the material world. The deity is made of earthly elements, and through authorized procedures it can accept the obeisances of those looking to see God and connect with Him. The deity is but a small replica of Krishna’s features. Say that the worshipable statue is one foot tall. Does this mean that Krishna is so short? Does this mean that we’re taller than Krishna? In actuality, the Lord is so tall that we could never find enough materials to dress Him properly. His transcendental belly has so much room that we could never properly fill it with sumptuous food preparations. Despite the fact that Krishna is unmanifest [alakshyam] and beyond the perception of the senses [adhokshaja], in mother Yashoda’s courtyard some five thousand years ago He was bound up to a mortar as punishment for having broken a pot of butter. The relevant details are presented in the Shrimad Bhagavatam   , the crown-jewel of Vedic literature, a bhakti-shastra. The difference between any other scriptural work, or shastra, and a work on bhakti is that the Supreme Lord is described in the most complete detail in a bhakti-shastra. In other works Krishna may be described as the Supreme Absolute Truth, the feature of Brahman that is beyond duality. Brahman is explained to be all-pervading, unmanifested to the naked eye. Brahman cannot be perceived by blunt senses or by instruments. No microscope exists that can perceive the size and presence of the spirit soul. We can only go off of outward symptoms. The Bhagavatam also touches on Brahman and its features, but as it is a bhakti-shastra, it spends more time describing the source of Brahman, Lord Krishna   . Despite the fact that He is unmanifest, in His original feature God is still a person. His personality is indescribable; hence the common use of the term “neti neti”, meaning “not this, not that”, in the Vedas. If you took a label maker and went from object to object and noted its relation to the Supreme Absolute Truth, you would have to label everything as “Not God.” After all, how can even the sun, which is composed of the material element of fire, be considered beyond duality? Something which is created must be destroyed, thereby indicating that it is subject to the influence of time and space. Krishna, on the other hand, is not bound by any force. Time never touches Him, as His spiritual body is always blissful and knowledgeable. He holds a flute in His hands and dazzles the ears of the liberated souls who take their only wealth in life to be Krishna consciousness, the steady stream of transcendental thoughts that can constantly flood the mind through recitation of the holy names, “Hare Krishna Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare, Hare Rama Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare   ”. The inconceivably brilliant Krishna appeared on earth in the form of a human child, one that looked like it was subject to birth and death like everyone else. A child is the dependent of the guardians, be they parents or other elderly figures. As a child can be controlled by a loving guardian, so Krishna could be tied to a mortar by His mother, the sweetheart Yashoda, the wife of the king of Vraja, Nanda Maharaja. This incident was so cherished by the reciter of the Bhagavatam, Shukadeva Goswami, that in the shloka that presented it the juxtaposition to Krishna’s all-pervasive and beginning-less and endless position was made. How was Yashoda able to bind Krishna? Elevated transcendentalists try their best just to see God, what then to speak of controlling Him? As Krishna is beyond past, present, future and the influence of space, the only conclusion is that He allowed Yashoda to bind Him. Children have no ability to pay for expensive vacations or to go to the amusement park, but adults find themselves in these places regardless. Through their loving innocence, the children are able to get the parents to willfully agree to visiting these places. Krishna is the Supreme Father, so to allow for loving exchanges He agrees to play the part of a naughty child who needs to be punished for His transgressions. The ropes used by mother Yashoda were never long enough, as Krishna retains His amazing features even when in the form of a child. Therefore devotees   rightfully look at the deity with the utmost respect. Though in the form of a statue made of resin, wood or stone, the deity is non-different from Krishna. It accepts the offerings of flowers, food and water made to it and returns them as prasadam   , or the Lord’s mercy. The rope became long enough once Krishna allowed it to be. The significance of the incident with mother Yashoda cannot be discussed enough. The beautiful Shyamasundara    was more than just intentionally captured by Yashoda’s ropes of loving affection. Shri Krishna would do anything for His devotees, regardless of the time or circumstance. If someone’s only desire is to connect with God in pure innocence, why would the most powerful person deny their request? He will go out of His way to do whatever it takes to please them, even if it means transgressing the social standards He instituted as part of His Vedas. The rules are meant to bring one to Krishna after all, so someone who is already there need not worry about self-realization. We don’t see any mention of Yashoda’s having viewed her son with awe or reverence. She did not sit in meditation or study Vedanta. She had no interest for understanding Brahman, but from her sincerity of purpose, she got to love God without inhibition. Krishna would have a similar interaction with a devotee later on during His time on earth. This time a princess found herself in trouble and needed Krishna to make her dress infinitely large. As a child being tied by His mother, Krishna first made sure the rope was never the proper size, as what measurement exists that can accurately account for Krishna’s body? With Draupadi, the princess of Panchala and wife of the five Pandava brothers, the situation called for a sari that did not have an end. Draupadi was in the middle of being disgraced in an assembly of kings, who were trying to take off her sari. In utter helplessness, Draupadi prayed to Krishna to save her, and He did so by making sure that no matter how much the kings pulled, her sari would never completely come off. The person who is above matter assumed the form of the largest garment in the world to protect His devotee. The loving spirit of devotion is best felt through separation, though we may not be fond of this method. Yashoda bound Krishna that day to the mortar, but eventually the Lord would have to be set free and then leave Vrindavana    completely. Never to fear, though, as through reliving His pastime and chanting    His holy names, that same butter thief can be bound up and remain in our consciousness forever. He can leave anytime He wants to, but since He is won over by pure love, He makes the heart and mind of the devotee His most comfortable residence. In Closing: As He has no end and no beginning, His greatness there is no measuring. Adhokshaja means His presence cannot measure, Unmanifest also is Vrindavana’s treasure. Yet from Yashoda He could not hide, With ropes of love to mortar she tied. That He let her only way to explain, His loss in chase was mother’s gain. Chant holy name with faith and confidence, So in your heart Shri Krishna to make residence.

Time = money = less happiness, study finds

What does "free time" mean to you? When you're not at work, do you pass the time -- or spend it?

The difference may impact how happy you are. A new study shows people who put a price on their time are more likely to feel impatient when they're not using it to earn money. And that hurts their ability to derive happiness during leisure activities.

Treating time as money "can actually undermine your well-being," says Sanford DeVoe, one of two researchers at the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management who carried out the study, which is to be published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.

Prof. DeVoe and PhD student Julian House based their conclusions on three experiments. In each, a sub-group of participants was primed, through survey questions, to think about their time in terms of money. This group subsequently showed greater impatience and lower satisfaction during leisure activities introduced during the experiments. However, those put into the sub-group reported more enjoyment and less impatience when they were paid during one of those activities, which was listening to music.

The experiments' results demonstrate that thinking about time in terms of money "changes the way you actually experience time," says Prof. DeVoe. "Two people may experience the same thing, over the same amount of time, yet react to it very differently."

With growth over the last several decades in jobs paid by the hour, it's important for people to be "mindful," of the impact this can have on their leisure enjoyment, he says, and allow themselves "to really smell the roses."

Provided by University of Toronto, Rotman School of Management

"Time = money = less happiness, study finds." February 6th, 2012. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-02-money-happiness.html

 

Posted by
Robert Karl Stonjek