Today Sian and I, began recording our voices using a webcam and then implementing them into windows movie maker. I was recorded first and my part was discussing Fungi and their medicinal purposes, and Sians part was second and included the discussion of the Bees and their medicinal purposes. However, whilst recording our voices we experienced a few issues, mainly to do with my part of discussing the Fungi. This was because I had to say a few of the Fungi names, which I found very difficult to pronounce. Whilst trying to pronounce the different Fungi names I would often make a mistake which meant recording had to start all over again, however it was successful after a couple of times. Also we both found the making of the picture slideshow very time consuming, because we had to make sure each picture matched with what was being said, which lead to a lot of adjustments, such as elongating pictures and shortening pictures within the slideshow. However overall I did enjoy this project, I learnt a lot of new information that I would of never of known otherwise. The investigation of Fungi and Bees made me appreciate them more, and be grateful that they help so much towards medicine and the human population. Here is our documentary.. Enjoy!
Today Sian and I attempted to make a start on our podcast, we decided that we were going to make a documentary, that consisted of just our voices, then a slideshow of relevant pictures attached to show what we were discussing at the time. Sian and I presented to each other the information we had already found on both the medicinal purposes of bees and fungi. We were both equally impressed with what we had found and began to write up a script in order for us to know exactly what we were saying when it came time to record ourselves. The script took a few hours more than we were expecting, this was because we both had strong ideas on what information we wanted to talk about and we had a few disagreements. However when the script was written we then timed it, it added up to around 8 minutes which was perfect because it was in lineament with the assignment brief. Sian and I decided to meet up the following day to record our voices and to start gathering pictures to make our slideshow.
When conducting my own research on Fungi I found that Fungi has been scientifically placed into a category of its own, much like the animal kingdom, there is a Fungi kingdom, which I found very interesting. One medicinal use I found that Fungi had historically achieved, is the creation of Penicillin. Penicillin is an anti-biotic that was derived from Fungi, that was among one of the first drugs to be effective against previous serious diseases, such as Syphilis. Even though Penicillin is still used today, many bacteria have found away to work against it. Nevertheless the historical uses of the Fungi in medicine is tremendous.
From my research I have found out that Bees are very crucial to the quality of human life, and they help us in many different ways. When Sian and I visited the Botanical Gardens we were unable to gather much information about the bee project going on there, I decided to take a look at their website. So here is what I discovered, at the gardens they are currently doing a project on Apothecary Bees, according to their website http://www.gardenofwales.org.uk/science/plants-for-health/ ; This project looks at the medicinal properties of honey and combines screening tests developed at the School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences. Surprisingly to me, Honey has long been known to have anti-bacterial properties and is already used in wound dressings. However the honey will vary in its effectiveness partly depending on the plants the bees visited to create it. In this project they will be screening wild flower honey, for activity against two of the most common hospital- acquired infections, the bacteria MRSA and Clostriduim difficile. This information was fascinating to me and since made me realise even more how important bees are to this planet. Furthermore, from personal experience, I have found the use of locally sourced honey is helpful in lowering symptoms of the allergy Hay-fever, which is another positive medicinal use for honey.
