Well, the first class presented there Science Spectacular to the experts today, so the day is nearly here!

It’s kinda late to post about progress now, because if we arn’t finished then that’s just ridiculous. I think now time is to be studying for the exams {both science and other} Yeah, No idea what to put here. I think I’ll have this as the shortest blog ever, and post again about my thoughts of the night on Monday. =) Good luck everyone!

Meditation and Yoga [The effects seem to be similar]

Summary: Meditation and Yoga is actually about slowing your body down and concentrating on breathing and your posture, rather than ‘Withdrawal from the world and dreaminess.’ The idea is to essentially ‘think nothing’ not actually do it. The Idea is to “dismiss thoughts as they arise.” Most experiments are dealt with by brain scans, and that explains the recent surge of information about meditation as technology advances. Also other machines have been used to measure anxiety [like that of a lie detector, measuring the perspiration on the hand.] Meditation sharpens the “default network” that deals with spontaneous bursts of thought and wandering minds. Experiments have shown that relaxation helps with: ADD and ADHD, blood pressure [low or high], concentration,  Obsessive-compulsive disorder, bi-polar disease, Alzheimer’s, anxiety disorder, alcoholism, sleep disorders, stress major depression and stops relapses. It also helps other diseases and disorders marked ‘by distracting thoughts.’ It can also sharpen a persons mind so that they would notice things they wouldn’t usually and has  positive effects on [I have statistics for these] HIV positive,  diabetes, epilepsy, advanced cancer, chronic pain and asthma. This is, to name a few. Awesome, huh?

I also already did a entire blog on binary beats, so that shouldn’t be nessercary, right? Please? XP

TCM Traditional Chinese Medicine

Traditional Chinese Medicine has the concept of most alternative medicines. They think of a disease as a imbalance in the person with their environment. They deal with the concept of “Chi” [the bodys natrual flow] and ying and yang. Some examples of ying yang in use are: Night/day, wet cough/dry cough, stillness/hyperactivity ect. Chinese Traditional Medicines have been around for more than 2000 years.

Herbalism

Looking at Herbalism, you can understand why in medieval times people thought there was such things as witches. There is an astounding range of flowers plants and herbs to cure an overwhelming amount of illnesses. Headaches, fevers, allergies, blood pressure, cold feet, blod clots, aches and pains, flaky skin, stomach aches,  heartburn, bowel problems, depression, additcion….  just flipping through the pages is a wide variety of things herbalism can cure. Although a lot is not reccomended with pregnancy. If you see a professional [and lets be serious, you wouldn't take conventional medicine without a doctor either. Would you?] and they have very little to non exsistant side effects. Most side effects are due to becuase you actully dont need that medicine, rather than ‘just because.’ [Sorry Moniqueif you want more than this I'm going to have to "the book" to school. Too much to re-type. =) ]

Homeopathy

Unforchantly the longer this blog takes the more lazy I get. [What? I've seriously been doing this for more than 7 hours. @.@ Arg!] And Beth has most of this stuff seeing as she has a large resources and previous knowlegde on this topic. [Go you!]. Although I do know that the concept is that “like cures like.” Eg [Yes Beth, I'm stealing yours.] If you had symptoms like mercury poisioning they used a tiny microscopic amount of mercury to a extremely large amount of water. [Beth has the exact zeros.] More herbal, alternative stuff. Although im looking and finding that some of these are poisonous… lolwhut?

Others

Aromatheropy, Reiki, accupunture, crystal healing, flower remides, food suppliments [lets not forget how important diet is!] and many more are other ways to experiment with Alternative medicine. It’s also mildly hilarious to see some of the names and then think of Harry Potter. LOL.

I would like to write more, but with our timeframe I’m not sure how much facts and statistics we can pump in. I think if we get this amount in, that’d be great and any extra will be bonus points. =)

Click on the “Click me!” To get the extra info. =)
Other than that I think I’m done
Peace
Lt-wolf

MEDITAION AND YOGA

More than 27,000 official pieces of research have been conducted over the last 20 years. Meditation is not a instant cure, but more of a lifestyle to give welbeing over many years without side effects. Examples from research:
At the Marylebone Health Centre in London, they have been able to cut their prescribing costs by 40% by using methods including yoga, meditation and relaxation.
1)An American fighter pilot, with a six-year history of high blood pressure, underwent various treatments (medicine, diet, physical exercise) without results. Following a six weeks program of yoga and relaxation, his blood pressure was normalized, and he regained full flight status. And as the researchers pointed out, relaxation also has an advantage over medicine in that it has no side effects, something which can be hazardous for a fighter pilot.
2)There are numerous reports on the effect of relaxation on high blood pressure – yoga also works well for low blood pressure, because the exercises normalize the blood pressure.
“After about ten lessons, the patient will be able to control his own stress and high blood pressure.”
3) From research into HIV positive: “These results suggest that stress management [through relaxation and meditation] to reduce arousal of the nervous system and anxiety would be an appropriate component of a treatment regimen for HIV infection.”
4) Of 149 diabetics, 104 were able to reduce their intake of medication after 40 days treatment with yoga and relaxation.
5)- 11 epileptics who were resistant to epileptic medicine meditated 20 minutes a day. After a year, a significant reduction in seizure frequency and duration was measured.
6) Of 73 patients with advanced cancer, who had attended at least 20 sessions of intensive meditation, 10% showed a remarkable slowing in the growth of the tumor and a further 10% had a less marked reduction. 50% experienced a greatly improved quality of life.
7) 51 chronic pain patients, whose condition had not improved with traditional medical care, took part in a 10 weeks meditation and relaxation program. 50% of the patients showed a 50% or more reduction in pain, while a further 15% of the patients had a reduction of 33% or more.
8)- 9 patients with asthma took part in a residential course in yoga and relaxation. After a week they were generally more relaxed, and were able to breath more easily, as the inspiratory and expiratory muscles were more relaxed.
9)Our experience on some of our longer courses, the 3 months course for example, is that some students have achieved what you might call a cure or a complete control of asthma. Quite a few have gone home from the course without any symptoms. According to reports, there have been over 1500 separate studies since 1930. All were related to meditation and its effects on the practitioners. Some statistics on people who meditate include results like:

-Heart rate, respiration, blood pressure and oxygen consumption are all decreased.
-Meditators are less anxious and nervous.
-Meditators were more independent and self-confident
-People who deliberated daily were less fearful of death.
-75% of insomniacs who started a daily meditation program were able to fall asleep within 20 minutes of going to bed.
-Production of the stress hormone Cortisol is greatly decreased, thus making it possible for those people to deal with stress better when it occurs.
-Women with PMS showed symptom improvements after 5 months of steady daily rumination and reflection.
-Thickness of the artery walls decreased which effectively lowers the risk of heart attack or stroke by 8% to 15%.
-Relaxation therapy was helpful in chronic pain patients.
60% of anxiety prone people showed marked improvements in anxiety levels after 6-9 months.

The seemingly nonsensical Zen practice of “thinking about not thinking” could help free the mind of distractions, new brain scans reveal. This suggests Zen meditation could help treat attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder (so-called ADD or ADHD), obsessive-compulsive disorder, anxiety disorder, major depression and other disorders marked by distracting thoughts. In the last decade, there has been a resurgence of scientific research into meditation, due in part to the wide availability and increasing sophistication of brain-scanning techniques. For instance, scientists recently found that months of intense training in meditation can sharpen a person’s brain enough to help them notice details they might otherwise miss. “It is important that this type of research be conducted with high scientific standards because it carries a long-standing stigma – perhaps well-deserved? – of being wishy-washy,” said researcher Giuseppe Pagnoni, a neuroscientist at Emory University in Atlanta. “Constructive skepticism should always be welcomed as a great sparring partner.”

Ok, as for progress for our team, I’m a little bit worried for Thursday.  Thursday, it seems like when the airstrike is coming, and I havent quite finished my bombshelter yet. Well… great. Thursday, as most people in our school know is the day that our project is “due.” it dosen’t have to be 100% complete, finished and polished but for a flash animator a little less than a week is scary.  Like Scary.

So this is the plan. Panic! I think that if we have our presentation up to a professional looking level, than we might escape decapitation. So rather than fretting on animating everything before the day. (because like seriously? No.) I think if we have everything lined and with a background, voices and SFX that are going to be donated by monique [I love you for that!] I think our milestone deadline seems possible.

For those of you who don’t know what I’m talking about, [My group members can skip this paragraph] I’ll line it out for you now. Backgrounds are easy to understand, but on Monday [hopefully] The music department are going to lend us recording equipment to record a oral part to the final product. Funny voices are going to be awesome. Also, When I say ‘lined’ I mean that once I recive the storyboard and individual pictures, I trace over them in the programe “Macromedia Flash” which will transfer the image to a ‘vector’ image. This is makes it possible to flash [because you cant flash or even edit jpegs.] And SFX [or Sound Effects] will be added on a extra layer by monique

I think if we can get to that stage, we’ll be ready enough for thurs. Because the weekend after is Cup weekend, which I have no trouble spending 4 days tidy-ing up our animation. Also, Since line-art and presentation /is/ the biggest milestone the extra week after thursday and the extra weekend to REALLY make sure everything is fine and dandy actully looks possible. So, if this plan works out we should have a AWESOME [no, really.] Flash for the Science Spectacular on the 10th of November. [dun dun dun!!]

I think because of the level of work we are literally sweating into this project this should be ok. I’m really happy to be doing this in groups, and with the people im with. Because seriously, There is no way in a frozen Icetruck that i’d be able to do all this by myself. Impossible. And I’m really happy with my group members, because they’ve all been really helpful and helping me out whenever they can. Three Cheers for you guys! =)

Ok, With that said I’ve actully tried to put my flash up on youtube to post here, but no such luck has occured. I added the file on October 10th, and the video still says: “This video is not yet processed. ” GRRR. Not that it really matters, We wernt going to show it on youtube anyway, but I wanted it here just for progress reasons. Oh well. I’ll have to try that again.

Now looking back I realise that I’ve written a therapeutic novel on my fears on a date a little under 4 days away. I hope that One of my teammates will come on today. [I have to repeat my love for MSN at this moment and it's awesomeness for the completion for this project.] So we can either confirm our script for voice recording tomorrow, or actully start sketching a storyboard.

So, a summary for this blog would be. Summary: I fear that we might not make thursday, but the final date, with long weekend and that extra week, is going to be a breeze.

Because, Well… we’ve done everything. Research is complete, the script just has to be revised and recorded, the characters are designed, we know whats going to happen we just have to get it down, and beths offered to help me with inking. Awesome, eh? Even if most bits arn’t lined, I think we’ll be ok. =) Whew!

Also, [sorry for those of you who get nauseated from timeskip.] After reading a few Youtube help forms, apparently .swf is a problem for youtube. So i’ll be trying a few different files then try again on wordpress.

EDIT:  Ok, So I couldn’t transfer all the things I saved to youtube because of the file format settings. I tried to convert it to .Mp4 and .AVI but alas it wouldn’t convert the .swf or the .hqx file. Ouch! So what I’ve had to is go back to the original .fla file and republish it but that means i’ve lost the previous stuff. 1,2,3 awww. … also there is no sound. but, whatever. xP Enjoy the quiet version. Without a border. lol.

The intro of our flash is going well, and a few poses posted from Beths [parowbc.wordpress.com] wordpress although I’ve tried posting my work on youtube, so I can place it on wordpress, but it seems I’m having technical havoc. Youtube seems unable to process the video. :S

I havent spent as much time on science as I usually would have, trying to catch up with my other subjects and tests that I sadly missed.

Although, Monique is starting our script, which will be processed to a sotryboard by beth I’ll then I’ll look at it, say what is and isn’t possible, and then I’ll flash it. Then we’ll add voices in and be done So, we have a great plan, but im mostly worried about time, as Flash can be very time consuming.

Well, I’ll get back to my medicine, and the next blog will show our updates from the science classes.

Lt-Wolf

Although, I did try and look up some books at my school library (Three Cheers for keeping promises to yourself!) A few books on meditation and yoga just explained poses (not exactly what i was looking for.) And some of the books in there where so old I didn’t even want to touch them. (I found one from 1928. Nineteen Twenty-eight! That’s exactly 80 years ago!) Just thinking about the incorrectness of the information gave me a headache. Also some of the books where really inappropriately named (I mean, ”The Dragons Journey” for a non-fiction book? Com’on.) Made it really hard to take it seriously. Although I did find one book that is quite helpful, although everything stated in the book has mostly already been found. That means I’m on the right track, yes? Also on the basis of TCM (Traditional Chinese Medicine) I’ve decided to give it the flick. Most of the information is extremely hard to understand (There is no way I’ll be able to explain it in my time slot) and seems over the top and travelling away from out main point. I think we’ll mention Acupuncture and the concept (Dealing with your Chi, or: mind AND body.) and leave it be. Phew!

Now that we have some information we are starting to tap together different scenes for out flash presentation. I actually want to do this fast as possible, seeing as I know that flash is going (or might) take a while to make. I’m sure if we keep it simple though, we’ll be able to do it as our group is pretty nifty computer wise. (Go technology!)

What I really need to do next is drag some idea’s out of my team and at least get a storyboard going. As soon as we have a rough idea of where everything needs to go It I think that will be the biggest hurdle.  We are meeting up tomorrow again (a Friday) So if i at least get something, I can start working on it on the weekend.

I want to post this now, (So I don’t forget to later) but I may edit it tomorrow as we have another science lesson and the weekend to update on. So, not much for now but I think we are on our way

*EDIT* A flash animation of our scientist (just practicing motion tweens)

Reseacrh is going well, meditation is still good for you and blah blah blah – but as i looked back it sounded almost as if I was selling alternative medicine instead of suggesting it as another option. So, I decided to research the oppisite side. After typing in to google “Meditation dosen’t work!” or something similar, I was annoyed to find that there wasn’t much there! Apparently with all of science research no one is actully willing to debate that it dosen’t work. Win for us?

Something I did find though, was if your not used to meditating that it can be REALLY hard to sit or lie somewhere while doing nothing. I realised if we were going to suggest this as an alternative for help with ADHD, how can you get a child to sit long enough to actully meditate? Plus everyone is different, so what now?

A site suggested something called “Binary Beats” only if you are wearing headphones Click here for What A Binary Beat Sounds Like ! Binary beats are supposed to meditate you, without any actully effort on your part. Me, the unbeliever, suspecting a scam of some sort decided to check it out more. Did I just possible find a alternative for my alternative? (lolwhut?)

As mentioned in my last blog, the brain works in Hz. (Hertz) as I only mentioned it briefly, i’ll actully pull the table out now. (As dictonary.com says Hz is “A unit of frequency equal to one cycle per second.” )

Beta, 13-40 waves/sec., normal, active
Alpha, 8-13 waves /sec., relaxed
Theta, 4-8 waves /sec., dream, sleep
Delta, 1-4 waves /sec., deep sleep

Also off topic, if you have less brain activity when your asleep (du’h Lisa) but is this why old people die most likely in there sleep ? There brain waves where low anyway then just stopped? I dunno. ANYWAY!

What binary beats do, is put one Hz frequency in one ear, and another in the other ear (this the need for headphones.) Your brain automaticly tries to compensate, and thus the brain will speed up or slow down depending on what you need. (I’ve seen a few for people coffee breaks if there tired at work!) I know I write alot, and luckily I found a nice youtube video that explained it for me. It all kinda clicked in after this. (It also has a small example of a beat if the one above didn’t work! )

He may mumble but he gets the point across. So, I was wondering does this actully work? Obviously the obvious method was to download one and try it out, which I did. The first time I listened to it I got the complete giggles. I could not stop laughing, which was weird. So I put my headphones away and went to do some more reseach then came back. The second time work much better, but I felt that if I sat in a warm chair and didn’t do anything late at night I’d feel tired anyway, so I disregarded that trial. Then I thought, if different music calms different people, then would different beats do the same? Also, even though it’s scientificly provern to work, does it only work because we believe it to work, or because it actully does?

Perhaps I’m not a very good subject to try this on. I usually like to think of myself as a calm individual and I meditate anyway. So perhaps I’d feel relaxed without the music? I was thinking maybe a not a prac, but a survey might be cool. Go around, ask how the person is feeling beforehand then without telling them what the music does (to get rid of the i believe factor) get them to listen to it, and then ask them a little while later how they feel.

Also, I noticed after further tinkering with my computer, I realised that the effects were as fast as I thought. I started listening to a 15 minute track this morning, about 10ish. I felt no different but when my family woke up and decided to rus around and drag me along, I found that I was just… not fussed. I was really relaxed and my family accused me of acting “tired” and demanding I go to bed earlier when I felt perfectly fine. So… is that a success? Interesting stuff though. (As a side note, I have to laugh at how many people say “This music is no way a replacement for actul treatment.”

Personally I’m starting to think that it works on the concept of any music. Some normal music can relax you, as rock metal (usually) wakes you up. So I think the term “Binary beats” is just to make it sound scientific when something like ”mood music” would suffice.

I have a few more links saved, but I think this is all I’ll do on Meditation, yoga and binary beats. I’m also /still/ trying to get a concept of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) I think I have the concept down, taking ying and to a extreme, and too much solitude and not enough sleep can be fixed with herbs or something. I’d love to know what some of the herbs are now, but seeing as it’s all in chinese… lol.

Woah, will all this information fit into my 2 minutes? LOL! And I’m sorry to say that my posts seem to get LONGER not shorter…. oops? :S

That’s all I have for now.
Lt-Wolf

Either way, I guess some progress during the holidays is better than none. So far I’ve been mainly browsing through the Internet, seeing with the large resources and books at school that it would be more helpful to wait another week. I’ve tried to watch out for Bias and try and get scientific proof mostly, but as I’ve been browsing for “meditation, yoga” and “Chinese medicine.” You can obviously imagine that there is no Black and White answer for me. Which is fine, even if I can’t verify it from one website, it’s given me ideas to what to look for next time. A basic summary is:

I’ve discovered from a couple of sites that a while back, people thought there was only 3 types of brain “states.” Awake, Asleep or dreaming. Although, with the number of studies on Meditation and relaxing yourself (and I’m shocked at how many studies there are!) they decided that there was a forth state, used during meditation or yoga etc.

Also, a few sites have suggested that meditation can actually change how your brain works. And the more “Professional” or better you are at ‘relaxing’ the more prominent this change is. Apparently, there was a test done that people had to (after meditating) pick out nonsense words from real words, then go back to meditating again. The test was set up as a large group of novices data against a large group of people who trained in meditating. The Advanced people in meditating where provern to have sharper focus, and easily got back to “thinking about nothing.” then the distracted novices. Although this is interesting, I’d like to investigate this more when I reach school to get more evidence.

Although something that was a general basis for “meditation = good” was that is decresses stress, and stops some disorders and diseases.

Sources show that not only does it genrally increase health and wellbeing, but attention spans, hyperactivity and stress seem to be alterted to. This can help in cases like ADHD or ADD or other mental disorders that deal with ‘distracting thoughts’

Percentages also show a increase in health with things like diabetes, people who are epileptics, asthma, chronic pain, even advanced cancer was slowed through a course of meditation.

I think this is quite plausable, seeing as we know that lack of sleep and stress can lead to sickness and sometimes anxiety, then isn’t it logical that being in a state that, like sleep slows down your brain ‘waves’ and reduces stress does that exact oppiste? Either way, I’d like to reaseach and get more examples for our presentation.

Another thing im reasearching is what exactly is ‘relaxing?’ For just sitting quietly or watching tv dosen’t actully do much according to these sites. So, does different meditation do different things? and which is the ‘best’ way to meditate? Does sitting in different postures help? Seeing as everyone is different, is there different meditations for people who have hyperactivity of insomnia, than people who are usually calm? Either way, interesting stuff.

Also, ninemsn claims that 1 in 7 docters use acupuncture! I’m also researching Chinese medicine. It’s good to see the differences in medicine.

Again, I still think that medicine needs to be in balance, but as seeing that i’m shocked at how much information is here, maybe the general public dosen’t know their alternatives?

I’m also still trying to figure out delicious.com I’ve saved my bookmarks for now, but i hope to upload them there soon

Either way, this post is STILL too long. Although I’ll be sure to get back to a weekly basis after the holidays. Toodles!

Lt-Wolf

Well, I have my first ”Science Spectacular” blog up. Hopefully I wont forget about it in the rush that is the holidays, but personally I’m really looking forward to this project. Ok, because previously I had no idea as to what I’m doing I went and looked at Ms. Graingers Blog and saw that she wondered if blogging was really that much better than writing a journal.

The answer?

Well, after we all get over the awkwardness of not knowing what the hell we are doing, the answer is HELLS YEAH! Maybe it is just my personal hate for all things handwritten, but the computer is a nice, neat and great way to keep things up to date. You can’t loose little bits of the internet, which is AWESOME. The only problem here is, getting all those bugs worked out and figuring out what all the buttons do.

Also, I really like the science spectacular. Getting to work with friends I havent been in a class with all year has really brightend up those science periods, and is awesome to look forward to now.  So other than that, and after appreciating my layout theme that screams dark caves and vampires, I guess we ought to talk about what our group has done so far.

Our group, consisting of three people, (Beth, Monique and Myself) is researching the differences between conventinal medicine, like anti-biotics and vaccinations, and Alternitive medicine. Weither it be Chinese medicine, Meditation, Yoga… or even a direct counterpart like a herbal supplement for anti-biotics. We hope to conduct our final presentation in the form of a flash document. Creating colorful characters to demenstrate our points and keep people amused.

Beth will be our chief designer and I will animate her drawings in Micromedia Flash.. Monique, who is great at voices, will really help with the voice overs of our characters, and help me polish up whatever needs to be done in the final presentation. We are all going to help research, as on our plan sheet we have different types of topics (Vaccinations, [Beth:] good/bad and alternatives, how they work ect. Anti-biotics, [Monique] different types, what it actully does. And then really alternative stuff, [Myself]like meditation, yoga ect. and how that can really help you.) I hope that even if we have our own topics, if one of us gets stuck for information, I’m sure we will all pitch in to fill any gaps. Because we are all friends, im certain our teamwork will be great.

I think this is a really important topic. And I think our team really does feel strongly about the need to inform people that their are other choices. Or even if there are other choices, which would be best for them in their situation. For people who are allergic to (or will become allergic, because… who knows the future?) a conventional medicine, say for example anti-biotics (because I happen to know a unnerving amout of people who  are becoming allergic to this) if we can find an alternative that will help them, I think we have achieved something really extrodanry for just a ‘school project.’

Speaking from personal experience, Diabetes is genetic in our family. Thankfully, I do not yet have diabetes, nor does any of my siblings, but one of my parents do. Now, it is a proven fact, that too many of some conventinal medications can actully do alot of damge to your liver. For those of you reading this that don’t know (but then again, who reading this wont be a science teacher?) The liver is responsible for your metabolism, and enzyme production, it converts nutrients to energy. Also it acts as a detoxificator. So unless we want some serious issues, caution might be needed for long term medication answers. Not to mention some of the side-effect of less refined pills can have.

The thing i’m worried most about in this topic is actully Bias. I hope that we can inform with humour rather than persuade. I’m neither alternative nor conventional when it comes to what I prefer most, because I think just like everything else you need balance. If you have back pain, a massage or something would be great and probably better for you. If you have a brokern leg however, seriously, go see a docter. 

I think that is all for this blog, as I don’t want to really make it any longer. I’ll be sure to nugde my team during the holidays to make sure things keep rolling.

Lt-Wolf