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,           

Science - Podcast Plant Research

Gentiana lutea (Yellowgentian) is found in the mountains of central and southern Europe. Gentian root (which can be as thick as a person’s arm) has a long history of use as a herbal bitter in the treatment of digestive disorders. The root contains one of the bitterest substances known to science which stimulates the taste buds and brain reflexes to promote the secretion of saliva and gastric juices. As such it has been used as an appetite stimulant in the treatment of anorexia. It is said to be especially useful in states of exhaustion from chronic disease and in cases of debility or weakness of the digestive system; strengthening the human system by stimulating the liver, gall bladder and digestive system.


Prunus africana (African cherry) is found in mountain tropical forests in central and southern Africa and Madagascar and has been used for centuries for its hard and durable timber as well as for the medicinal properties of its bark, which is used to treat malaria, fevers, kidney disease, urinary tract infections and more recently prostate enlargement (benign prostatic hyperplasia). Overall, the medicinal retail trade for P .africana is estimated to be US$220 million/year (WWF, 2001).

Rauvolfia serpentin

a (Indian snakeroot, Sarpaghanda) is member of the dogbane family, found in India, Pakistan and south east Asia But the plant is also an important healer, used for stomach disorders, snakebite and epilepsy. R. serpentine is also the source of the alkaloid resperine, which revolutionized the treatment of hypertension in the 1950s and is still commonly prescribed today. Chemically similar to serotonin, resperine was also used to treat severe mental illnesses due to its powerful sedative properties

Common flowers and plants

Most of these plants and medicines are unfamiliar with us however there are a lot more common ones in the UK such as:

The California Poppy which is an effective (anxiety reliever)

The blood flower is a type of tropical milkweed with toxic milky sap that is emetic (it makes you hurl). It’s also historically favored as a heart stimulant and worm appellant.

Alfalfa which can treat morning sickness, nausea, kidney stones, kidney pain and urinary discomfort. It is a powerful diuretic and has a bit of stimulant power, helping to energize after a bout with illness. It’s a liver and bowel cleanser and long-term can help reduce cholesterol.

When taking about plants its amazing to discover that many medicinal plants can be found in your own back garden.  After finding this out I thought I would have a look in my friends garden to see what types of plants I could find.

Aloe vera: it contains various compounds that reduce inflammation, swelling, redness, pain and itching.”

Uses: For burns, cuts and minor abrasions; also as a mild laxative

Dandelion:  a nutritious healing herb that stimulates the flow of bile. It enhances the body’s ability to eliminate toxins.

Uses: As a diuretic (may help with PMS bloating), prevents gallstones and cleanses the liver. “Dandelion leaves contain noteworthy amounts of vitamin C and beta-carotene and are considered an antioxidant that help sets the stage for preventing many diseases,” says Cervone.

Lemon balm: has a calming effect on heart palpitations and an agitated state of mind.

Uses: Soothes stomach, calms nerves.

Lavender: used in both medicine and cosmetics.

Uses: As a sedative, stress reliever, to restore calm and relieve tension.

Parsley: Parsley leaves, roots and seeds all contain an oil with significant diuretic and mild laxative properties. Parsley also inhibits the secretion of histamines, a compound produced by the body that causes allergies, hives and hay fever.

Uses: Breath freshener, allergy relief, tummy troubles.

Science - Podcast Medicinal Plants

To begin simply, plants equal life. They are the primary producers that sustain all other life forms. They regulate air and water quality, shape ecosystems and control the climate. They provide food, medicine, clothes, shelter and the raw materials from which innumerable other products are made. These benefits are widely recognised but poorly understood. Because of this plants are both a vital part of the world’s biological diversity and an essential economic resource for human existence. Yet plant extinctions are occurring at a rate unmatched in geological history, leaving ecosystems incomplete. Current extinction rates are at least 100 to 1,000 times higher than natural background rates, with a quarter of the world’s coniferous trees known to be in jeopardy and as many as 15,000 medicinal plants under threat. Whilst the extinction of a species is the ultimate loss, the process of extinction itself has serious consequences for local ecosystems. Plant to plant interactions effect both resource availability and habitat structure, and play an important role in mediating the responses of natural systems meaning the loss of any one species weakens an ecosystem’s ability to adapt in a rapidly changing world.

Science - Podcast Research

  RESEARCH





After visiting the botanical garden and asking ourselves all these questions we continued to research the need for these plants and their main uses. The information that we discovered was that around 80% of the world’s population depends directly on plant based medicines for health care and because of this many botanical gardens play a large role in medical plant study and research, cultivation and conservation. As this information was really interesting we decided to base our podcast on plants and their uses this medicine and general health care.

We were able to gather and learn a lot of interesting things about medicinal plants.
Medicinal plants harvested from the wild Provide both a relief from illness and a source of income, over 70,000 plant species are thought to be medicinal. Loss of habitat combined with over-harvesting threatens the survival of many of these plant species. Luckily one of the Botanic gardens main jobs is to ensure their conservation. The first botanical gardens originated in Europe in the sixteenth century. The reason for this was the cultivation and study of medicinal plants - at a time when medicine and botany were essentially the same discipline. The tradition of cultivating and displaying medicinal plants has been continued by many botanic gardens across the world which is shown by BGCI study in 1998 highlighting the medicinal plant collections of 480 botanic gardens. Botanic gardens provide a permanent location around which an infrastructure can develop. Around the world, they have become centers for the research and study of disciplines as diverse as taxonomy, ecology, agronomy, horticulture, ethnobotany and habitat restoration, all of which inform medicinal plant conservation.

Botanic gardens have a long-standing connection to medicinal plants in particular, since the sole purpose of all early botanic gardens was to grow and study medicinal plants. They are inherently well-placed to respond to the very specific local conservation needs of medicinal plants and the people who rely on them for health and livelihood in a particular region. Moreover, they are probably the most important agencies for the conservation of native medicinal plants, since plants are not often the priority of other conservation bodies and government agencies related to agriculture pay little attention to those species of undetermined economic use. BGCI maintains the PlantSearch database which records data on plants in botanic garden collections. As of August 2007 the PlantSearch database held details on over 2,540 botanic gardens, 681 of which have uploaded their species data, totalling 505,000 records of approximately 140,000 different taxa. The database is available for public use, although garden addresses are only accessible after requesting further information from the garden itself, due to the valuable nature of some of the plants held.

Science - Podcast inspiration

Scientific and creative learning

Assignment Part 2

For the second part of our assignment we had to get into groups of no more than three people, to produce a podcast to show how an out of classroom environment can develop an innovative scientific idea.  The podcast could be in the form of a film, documentary, interview or any other contemporary idea.  The podcast has to reflect one of the visits that we have been on; which was either The National Botanical Gardens, the National Museum of Wales or St Fagan’s.

Once we had been on all of the trips our inspiration for the podcast come from The National Botanical Garden.  This Botanic Garden of Wales is set on historic parkland, dating back around 400 years and is such a beautiful place to visit. The National Botanic Garden of Wales opened in May 2000 and is the first national botanic garden to be created in the new millennium.

The gardens mission is to inspire, educate and conserve has not only made this place a wonderful but has made the whole place fascinating and relevant too.  Spread across 560 acres of beautiful country side, the botanical garden has an amazing collection of over 8000 plant varieties.  There are a stunning range of themed gardens that appeal to a wide range of visitors, from those who just love the sight and smells of flowers to those who want to know about Medicinal plants or the latest DNA research into plant evolution.

Being in an outdoor environment got us thinking about what we were seeing and we started to ask ourselves different questions. After discussing our thoughts we came up with a few common questions that we both wanted answered. These were:

• ·         Why grow so many amazing  plants?
• ·         Why so many different plants
• ·         Are they intentional
• ·         What are they used for
• ·         Do they all have different purpose
• ·         Do they grow them there to preserve or use
• ·         Do they grow them from the beginning

Assignment Part 2: The Music

Now that we have finally finished our stop-motion animation we have to add sound to it.

"Sound effects play an important role in conveying action.  Music helps express emotion". Michael Geisler

I never thought it would be so to choose to simply choose what music/sound to use.  It took us the whole day experimenting with so many different sounds and music to find the best one that suited the stop-motion film.  We tried everything slow music, fast music, acapella until finally we stumbled across Jack Johnson - The 3 R's Reduce, Reuse, Recycle song which was perfect as the lyrics in the song are all about recycling.  Adding this song to our stop-motion animation and then playing it over with the music included made the whole animation so much more effective and really fun to watch.  

We this was complete we saved the stop-motion animation to anything and everything we could like memory stick, sending to our emails, every device we could so that we new there was no way we could lose it.

Below is the song we chose:

Assignment Part 2: Stop-motion animation

We have finally nearly finished our stop-motion animation and we have taken nearly 4000 shots to get to the final stages.  The most difficult part was creating the paper origami moving game or fortune teller as some people like to call it.  We thought the initial process of making it would look great in the film as there is so many parts and paper folding required to make it.  This was the tricky part, and took us a very long time to get reach shot and image right.  Once particular part of making it involves tuning the folded piece of paper over onto the other side and as we had to try and make this movement without our hand being in any of the shots it proved to be such a difficult procedure to do.  We tried absolutely everything we could think of, holding the edge of the paper with the tip of our fingers slightly out of the screen, but this failed as in every shot you could notice our hand or finger.  We tried putting objects behind the paper, gradually getting bigger ones so the paper would rise, but once it got to a certain height you could see the object underneath in the camera screen.  After trying all of these we decided to attach some string to paper to lift it up and twirl it around,  this worked brilliantly but the only problem we had was you could see the string in the camera.  Our final and last attempt at this was to pull a piece of my hair out and attach this to the paper to pick it up and turn it around, how we came to think of using my hair I don't know and its really funny to think that it actually worked.  

Everything seems to be coming together nicely and we have been able to include a lot of useful quotes and information about recycling into our stop-motion animation.  

Assignment Part 2: Stop-motion animation

Making our whole film out of paper has been quite stressful on times as trying to get the perfect shots whilst the paper is in the exact place we needed it to be in and also trying to quickly take our hands out of the image and capture the paper before it moves into the wrong position has get quite annoying on times, especially when the paper was moving out of position just before we could capture image.

One of mine and Sara's favorite parts so far of the stop-motion film is the part where we turn one of our quotes into a tree and make it look like lots of little leaves are falling from sky down onto the tree.  Again even though this looks so simple in the film it took so many shot to move all the little leaves down the page and eventually end up on top of the tree.  At one point when we were doing this Sara coughed and all the leaves flew off the page, so we had to try and get each one back onto the paper in the exact place they were in in the previous shot, luckily we both found it really funny and just carried on.  Next which is the part me and Sara are so proud of is when we came up with the idea of making a mini JCB to move across the page and cut down the tree, showing how trees are cut down to make paper.

To get the JCB to look like it was moving across the screen we had to move it a little bit at a time across the page taking shots every single time it moved.  At this point we had taken over 400 shots.  We have to keep watching everything as we go along as we want to make sure it is all flowing together and looks good.  So far we are enjoying making this stop-motion film so much, as we love anything to do with creativity and art.

Assignment Part 2: Stop-motion animation

During the making of our stop-motion animation film, both me and Sara came up with some amazing ideas and creations, the part at the beginning the film where we crumple up a piece of paper and then it open out, I think is really impressive and we couldn't believe how good it looked when we watched that part over once we had completed it. It took us ages to get it perfect as we were taking 3 shots each time, we had to quickly get the paper in the right position and move our hand out of the screen shot to take the image.  To get the paper to crumple like it does in the film took so many shots to make it look realistic.  After doing this we then had to make the paper un-crumple which again took a while to get right and so many shots were taken to complete the whole process even though it looks really straight forward in the film, it was really fiddly and a lot of hard work went into making it look at professional as possible.  Once this part was complete we made it look like the unfolded crumpled paper becomes a fresh piece of paper again.  To achieve this we had to take the crumpled paper and place a fresh sheet over it leaving only a small part of the crumpled piece to be seen by the viewers, we then had the repeat the process by moving the fresh piece over paper gradually over the crumpled piece with one of our hands until the fresh sheet completely replaced the crumpled one.  Every time we made a movement we had to take a shot so the film would all flow together neatly.  Trying to explain the whole process is just as difficult as it was to actually create the stop-motion film in real life.   By this time we were not even half way through the film and we had already taken over 200 shots.

Assignment Part 2: Stop-motion animation

Once everything was set up, we had to decide what we going to include in our stop-motion animation film so we decided to research a little bit about recycling and the recycling of paper and its process, to give us some ideas.

We came up with the idea to use paper creatively and make different objects and shapes out of it throughout the whole of the film, this would show both of our creative abilities and hopefully make a impressive stop-motion animation film.

First of all we decided to start off the film will a little quote about recycling so that viewers have some idea of what the film is going to be about.  We then carried on with creating different designs out of paper, and how different scenes would have some connection to recycling. 

  

Assignment Part 2: Stop-motion animation

 After one of our lessons in uni where both me and Sara created a mini paper stop-motion film using paper, we realised that we were actually quite good at using paper to create stop-motion animations.  So as our initial idea for our stop-motion animation did not go according to plan, we decided to change the whole thing completely and make a stop-motion animation film using paper.  After deciding to change our idea we then had to come up with a contemporary issue to relate our film to, so as we were creating the stop-motion film out of paper we decided that it would be a great idea to focus the film on recycling as paper is recyclable.  

First of all before we could start the film we had to download Zu3D to create our stop-motion film on, this proved quite difficult as in the beginning, the program was successfully downloading onto my laptop but would not open.  After trying numerous different things to try and fix it we finally got it to open and work properly.  

Once this was complete we when had to then set up our work station to start creating our film. Trying to get the right amount of light and place the camera in the exact position was also difficult as wherever we placed the camera it was falling or the focus was not right.  However eventually we manage to hook it onto a wine rack, where it was in the perfect position for us to create our film, with the right amount of light and focus.