Biophysics- Week 1- I am ALIVE!

What IS a living system?

To know whether an object is a living system or not takes greater consideration than just it's chemistry. One aspect of a living system is that it has a spirit, or, you can say, an energetic quality that is tangible to the senses. For example, a real plant viruses a fake plant- both are made of matter, carbon, other chemicals, and have energy (in the sense of e=mc2), but one can "feel" the difference between the two.
The other aspect to a living system is it's contribution to the cycle of life, a.k.a the food web. The study of ecology will teach that all living organisms fall somewhere along the food chain in a specific trophic level- in other words, what organisms eat and who eats them. It also shows the amount of energy that each level is responsible for transferring throughout the system/ food web.
Here's a 5 min video explaining this concept:

Thus, to be a living system, one must 1.) contribute to the food web and 2.) have a tangible spirit. Therefore, I/ we, as human beings, are living systems.

Conscious or Not?

My group reviewed this article in class which spoke about tests that are being done to examine the consciousness levels of those in vegetative states. Being a student of Acupuncture, I naturally consider- how would these test results change with the implication of acupuncture? With acupuncture on the rise in the West, this could be one incredibly useful area of application & it fuels my desire to dive into the research element once I become an L.Ac.