ACCHS Biology & Physics 2017

“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”  -Rainer Maria Rilke The Uncertainty Principle explains the limitations of predicting a quantum particle's exact future trajectory since we cannot measure both its position and momentum simultaneously. Though we can get pretty darn close to a prediction, it is only a probability and depends on which aspect is measured.  The more we focus on momentum, the more the position is unclear. The same works vise versa.  When we expand beyond the quantum range, as originally explained by Isaac Newton, we seem to have the capacity to measure position ...

As someone who has always valued and prioritized sleep, I was quite interested in the articles we read last week.  Particularly The University of Surry Study on the impacts of an extra hour of sleep (or lack there of). Though the short term impacts of sleep deprivation are disruptive, a night or two of crap sleep may be temporarily alleviated by caffeine or adrenaline.  However when we start to talking about long term impacts i.e. diabetes, obesity, immune system dysfunction, inflammation and cancer, things start to get real.  We strive to be perpetually at our best, though life doesn't always allow 8 hours of Z's.  Perhaps more education on the long term effects of sleep deprivation could help our western minds prioritize this essential restorative practice. Despite my interest on the impact of lunar cycles on sleep, this particular week was a lousy data sample as I was traveling back east for my sisters graduation.  Jet lag, a packed schedule and uncomfor...

Evolution cannot occur without genetic mutations.  Such wonderful and often frightening changes, whether natural or environmentally induced, have had a profound impact on our current human appearance, culture and relationship to the planet. Reading about "Lucy" our closest and most complete ancestral fossil gives us a ton of  insight on our current condition.  By analyzing her structure, scientist determined that she frequently walked upright, though had not developed into the cognitive super genius powers of the most current Homo sapiens sapiens.  Though Lucy's species became extinct three million years ago as a result of climate change, a parallel species Paranthropus boisei survived as a result of their large jaws and teach.  A third species, Homo habilis, with smaller jowls evolved into scavengers, beginning the cycle of Hominid meat eating.  The protein and nutrients helped develop larger brains leading to the use of tools.  Homo Ergaster's smal...

Greetings! Nina here. I am a lifelong dancer working as preschool movement/mindfulness teacher and filling my income gaps in hospitality. As a person who experiences much of the world through movement, my body is my instrument and the prominent lens through which I understand the world.  In this light, I am drawn to understand how the systems of the body work and how they adapt and change through the lifespan. My curiosity has consistently pulled me towards the health sciences. After exploring western medicine and immersing myself in various limbs of bodywork studies, I found Chinese Medicine to allign most essentailly with my own holistic thoughts on wellness.

Last weeks class gave me an opportunity to play with several mind twisting Frames of Reverence.  Knowing that we only have our own vantage point from which to view the world, we must accept that the rest can only be imagined.  Since we are humans with incredible imaginations we have the uncanny ability to picture things that are not there (not to be confused with the dolphins sending images via sound waves).  However, the imagined reality and the actual reality will never be quite the same. There are many things we cannot see from where we stand. Black holes, the dark side of the moon and of course, are universe before the Big Bang cannot be seen from our perspective here on earth.  As a result of tide shifts, the moon does not rotate the same as it once did, and so its rotations only display one side as it circles the Earth. A black hole, is a region of spacetime with such a strong gravitational pull that no particle can escape once it has passed the "point of n...

Biology class this week raised many interesting questions that moved around the room with fluidity and enthusiasm.  One thought in particular that has stuck with me was in reference to intention.  When discussing the open-label placebo studies of Ted Kaptchuk, my mind was blown.  It seems rather odd that someone could knowingly take a placebo or "fake pill" and still show significant improvement.  There is clearly something very powerful happening as a result of this 'ineffective' dosing. Is it the ritual of taking something everyday?  Is it the relationship between patent and practitioner?  Or is there something beyond our scope of understanding facilitating this unexplained healing. Though this question still baffles me, it has illuminated some intangibles in healthcare that often get overlooked, particularly in western medicine.  Specifically, the role of patient-practitioner relationship in the healing process.  It seems clear that a crit...