Science - Podcast

To make it easier to see all my blogs related to the science podcast I have added labels to all of the ones that I have created.

You will be able to find all of them on the right hand side of my blog under 

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Assignment Part 2: The final outcome

There is our final stop-motion animation video :) hope you enjoy watching it!

And also remember to - REDUCE, REUSE, RECYCLE 

FINAL STOP-MOTION ANIMATION VIDEO

When we had to go into uni to show the class our stop-motion animation, we got to watch everyone else's. It was amazing to see all the different stop-motion animations that everyone had created.  Some of the ideas people came up with were really interesting to watch. One of the films was really empowering and had a really good message about bully, which was really quite emotional but empowering at the same time.

Science - Podcast Review

Overall I have thoroughly enjoyed taking in this project, and the whole aspect of using an outdoor leaning environment to inspire our research.  It was interesting to find and discover all the facts about plants and their amazing uses that I was unaware of before starting this and how may different plants are relied on so much all over their world for their healing properties and how they are used for medicines.

StrengthsI believe that our biggest strength is how we were able to link medicinal plants and our trip to the Botanical Garden so well and in addition we found some additional information about plants for health. I also feel that the information that we came across about the Lingonberrie plant was a fantastic find and linked in really well with our podcast.  Furthermore I feel that as a group we all worked well together and all contributed effectively in order to produce and find some really great information; going to the Botanical Gardens again in our own time to obtain added research really benefited the podcast as well.

Weaknesses

The program that we used to create the podcast which is called Audacity was quite difficult for us as a group to use as none of us were particularly familiar and experienced with it and its different function.

Improvements If we had the opportunity to do the podcast again I think it would be beneficial to learn a bit more about Audacity to fully understand how it works, and add extra effects e.g. music and sounds.

This module has been very fun as it is completely different to other modules that I have done in Uni.  I have enjoyed all the creative parts to the module as I love anything that is creative and I would definitely choose to do this again. 

Thank you Anne :)

Science - Podcast Medicines in May at the Botanical Garden

As we were researching for extra information we came across 'Medicines in May' which was an event being held in the National Botanical Gardens.  When I saw this I immediately thought it would be a brilliant idea to go and see what it was all about.  In the description on their website noted that there would be talks, tours, exhibitions, events and family activities all linked to the theme of Plants for Health and includes reflections of the historic use of medicinal plants that they have there at the Garden.

Here are some pictures from the day: 

Science Podcast - Lingonberries

Whilst researching different medicinal plants we found a new up plant that has recently been in the news and media, as well as talked out by many people and researchers, which is called the Lingonberry plant. This is a plant in which its berries are meant to prevent weight gain.

Berries are an amazing group of fruits with a wide variety of chemical compounds that confer benefits to our bodies.  

Berries contain a group of chemicals called polyphenols which are potent antioxidants that help protect the fruits tender flesh from the sun’s radiation.  These polyphenols also work effectively within our bodies to neutralise free radicals from environmental factors such as pollutants and from the metabolism of foods that we ingest.  Everyone dreams of being able to eat chocolate and pizza all day without putting on a pound, and now researchers could have found a simple way of making this dream a reality

 The results of a study carried out by the Lund University in Sweden were recently published in the peer reviewed Journal of Nutrition and Metabolism which proved the efficacy of lingonberries and their ability to prevent weight gain.

In this study, mice were fed with a high fat diet for 13 weeks which was intended to mimic the fatty western diet. They were divided into groups and 20% of their diet comprised of berries. Each group of mice was fed with a different berry which included raspberries, blackberries, acai berries and lingonberries.

After three months, the mice that were fed a high fat lingonberry diet had the best results. Their weight gain was no different to the subjects that were fed a low fat diet and additionally their blood sugar and insulin levels were low as well.

The researchers concluded that lingonberries prevent the harmful effects of a high fat diet and suggest that lingonberries could be useful in preventing obesity, aid in weight loss goals, and its related disorders. However, an obvious limitation is that the study has not looked at the effect of lingonberry consumption on body measures and health outcomes in humans and crucially the mice that were fed lingonberries still put on weight with the high fat diet, just not as much. And obviously as the berries were only tested on mice it isnt 100% reliable for humans. 

Further more this amazing discovery comes with the problem that certain individuals mainly being celebrities are most likely to become addicted to these miracle berries as a method of prevent weight gain.  Even though this new discovery and finding is exciting, it should not be seen as an excuse and interpreted as a license to eat an unhealthy diet as long as you add lingonberrries! So if anyone is trying to lose weight, relying on these lingonberries for weight control is not a wise or healthy approach.

Science - Podcast Are there any disadvantages?

Disadvantages

Although everything we have spoken about so far seems to be positive, some people also have reasons as to why using plants as medicines can have a negative impact.

Alisa Price believes that Not all medicines benefit from being made using plants. She believes The manufacturing systems we currently are very high quality and perfectly adequate for the majority of medicines we need. The industry has invested enormous money and time into fine tuning the manufacturing of medicines, and we have all benefited in terms of product quality, safety and reliability.  Plant biotechnology is very new, and the manufacturing details have not yet been fine tuned.

Assignment Part 2: Stop-motion animation

The whole process of making and creating this stop-motion film has been really enjoyable and both me and Sara have really enjoyed the whole process.  At first with the both of us not really being that good with IT and technological things, we were quite worried of not being able to create a stop-motion animation that was good. 

Once we had taken the last shot for our stop-motion animation, it was time to watch the whole thing over were all the shots would be linked together to create the stop-motion animation film. After so much time, effort, dedication and hard work we put into making the film as good as we possibly could, we were so shocked once we had played the whole thing over and couldn't quite believe that we had actually created this film and how professional it looked.  We are so proud of how it has turned out and it just goes to show that hard work and a little bit of belief in ourselves has payed off.  I would definitely like to make another one and see all the different things that could be created and will definitely use Zu3d when I go into a career of teaching or working with children,