The Solace of Open Spaces

The Solace of Open Spaces

Author: Gretel Ehrlich

Publisher: Open Road Media

Published: 2017-02-21

Total Pages: 96

ISBN-13: 1504042883

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These transcendent, lyrical essays on the West announced Gretel Ehrlich as a major American writer—“Wyoming has found its Whitman” (Annie Dillard). Poet and filmmaker Gretel Ehrlich went to Wyoming in 1975 to make the first in a series of documentaries when her partner died. Ehrlich stayed on and found she couldn’t leave. The Solace of Open Spaces is a chronicle of her first years on “the planet of Wyoming,” a personal journey into a place, a feeling, and a way of life. Ehrlich captures both the otherworldly beauty and cruelty of the natural forces—the harsh wind, bitter cold, and swiftly changing seasons—in the remote reaches of the American West. She brings depth, tenderness, and humor to her portraits of the peculiar souls who also call it home: hermits and ranchers, rodeo cowboys and schoolteachers, dreamers and realists. Together, these essays form an evocative and vibrant tribute to the life Ehrlich chose and the geography she loves. Originally written as journal entries addressed to a friend, The Solace of Open Spaces is raw, meditative, electrifying, and uncommonly wise. In prose “as expansive as a Wyoming vista, as charged as a bolt of prairie lightning,” Ehrlich explores the magical interplay between our interior lives and the world around us (Newsday).


The Science of Open Spaces

The Science of Open Spaces

Author: Charles G. Curtin

Publisher: Island Press

Published: 2015-07-23

Total Pages: 272

ISBN-13: 159726993X

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Since the days of the American Frontier, our management policies have promoted a one-size-fits-all mentality for large, complex landscapes. Landscape ecologist Charles Curtin argues that instead we need a science-based approach that accounts for the dynamic nature of complex systems and gives local stakeholders a say in their futures. The Science of Open Spaces proposes that we return to "first principles"--fundamental physical laws of the universe--and think about complex systems from the ground up based on modern scientific theory backed up by practical experience. Curtin walks us through foundational concepts of thermodynamics, ecology, sociology, and resilience theory, applying them to real-world examples from years he has spent designing large-scale, place-based collaborative research programs in the United States and around the world.


Stitching the West Back Together

Stitching the West Back Together

Author: Susan Charnley

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2014-09-10

Total Pages: 366

ISBN-13: 022616585X

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News headlines would often have us believe that conservationists are inevitably locked in conflict with the people who live and work on the lands they seek to protect. Not so. Across the western expanses of the United States, conservationists, ranchers, and forest workers are bucking preconceptions to establish common ground. As they join together to protect the wide open spaces, diverse habitats, and working landscapes upon which people, plants, and animals depend, a new vision of management is emerging in which the conservation of biodiversity, ecosystem integrity, and sustainable resource use are seen not as antithetical, but as compatible, even symbiotic goals. Featuring contributions from an impressive array of scientists, conservationists, scholars, ranchers, and foresters, Stitching the West Back Together explores that expanded, inclusive vision of environmentalism as it delves into the history and evolution of Western land use policy and of the working landscapes themselves. Chapters include detailed case studies of efforts to promote both environmental and economic sustainability, with lessons learned; descriptions of emerging institutional frameworks for conserving Western working landscapes; and implications for best practices and policies crucial to the future of the West’s working forests and rangelands. As economic and demographic forces threaten these lands with fragmentation and destruction, this book encourages a hopeful balance between production and conservation on the large, interconnected landscapes required for maintaining cultural and biological diversity over the longterm.


Healing Spaces

Healing Spaces

Author: Esther M. Sternberg MD

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2010-09-30

Total Pages: 352

ISBN-13: 0674256832

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“Esther Sternberg is a rare writer—a physician who healed herself...With her scientific expertise and crystal clear prose, she illuminates how intimately the brain and the immune system talk to each other, and how we can use place and space, sunlight and music, to reboot our brains and move from illness to health.”—Gail Sheehy, author of Passages Does the world make you sick? If the distractions and distortions around you, the jarring colors and sounds, could shake up the healing chemistry of your mind, might your surroundings also have the power to heal you? This is the question Esther Sternberg explores in Healing Spaces, a look at the marvelously rich nexus of mind and body, perception and place. Sternberg immerses us in the discoveries that have revealed a complicated working relationship between the senses, the emotions, and the immune system. First among these is the story of the researcher who, in the 1980s, found that hospital patients with a view of nature healed faster than those without. How could a pleasant view speed healing? The author pursues this question through a series of places and situations that explore the neurobiology of the senses. The book shows how a Disney theme park or a Frank Gehry concert hall, a labyrinth or a garden can trigger or reduce stress, induce anxiety or instill peace. If our senses can lead us to a “place of healing,” it is no surprise that our place in nature is of critical importance in Sternberg’s account. The health of the environment is closely linked to personal health. The discoveries this book describes point to possibilities for designing hospitals, communities, and neighborhoods that promote healing and health for all.


Open Space: People Space

Open Space: People Space

Author: Catharine Ward Thompson

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2007-09-07

Total Pages: 345

ISBN-13: 1134120087

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Responds to current need for guidance on inclusive design in outdoor environments Deals with all situations, urban and rural Highly visual presentation Includes contributions from leading names in landscape, architecture and design


Emerging Approaches in Design and New Connections With Nature

Emerging Approaches in Design and New Connections With Nature

Author: Özdamar, Esen Gökçe

Publisher: IGI Global

Published: 2021-12-03

Total Pages: 348

ISBN-13: 1799867269

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In today’s changing and transforming socio-economic, political, cultural, and technological paradigms, we encounter many methodologies, approaches, proposals, and practices in reconsidering the disappearing or emerging relations in the human/nonhuman-environment-nature interaction. These approaches, proposals, and practices range from new methods of urban gardening to biophilic design and augmented/immersive environments. However, these human-centric approaches, which only aim to meet their needs or emerge as technology-oriented replicas and representations of nature, lead to a departure from a holistic approach to the natural and artificial environment. Therefore, how can new and emerging approaches or methodologies draw a holistic framework for environmental health, sustainability, wellness, and co-existence between environments for all living beings? Emerging Approaches in Design and New Connections With Nature covers a variety of topics related to the intersection between nature, environment, and ways of living and provides a comprehensive guide to biophilic design and the idea of design and nature, including benefits, theories, and effects. Covering topics such as biophilic design and sustainability, soundscapes and landscapes, and urban environments and design, it is ideal for architects, designers, urban planners, landscape designers, policymakers, engineers, interior designers, practitioners, students, academicians, and researchers.


Conservation Design for Subdivisions

Conservation Design for Subdivisions

Author: Randall G. Arendt

Publisher: Island Press

Published: 2012-09-26

Total Pages: 209

ISBN-13: 159726850X

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In most communities, land use regulations are based on a limited model that allows for only one end result: the production of more and more suburbia, composed of endless subdivisions and shopping centers, that ultimately covers every bit of countryside with "improvements." Fortunately, sensible alternatives to this approach do exist, and methods of developing land while at the same time conserving natural areas are available. In Conservation Design for Subdivisions, Randall G. Arendt explores better ways of designing new residential developments than we have typically seen in our communities. He presents a practical handbook for residential developers, site designers, local officials, and landowners that explains how to implement new ideas about land-use planning and environmental protection. Abundantly illustrated with site plans (many of them in color), floor plans, photographs, and renditions of houses and landscapes, it describes a series of simple and straightforward techniques that allows for land-conserving development. The author proposes a step-by-step approach to conserving natural areas by rearranging density on each development parcel as it is being planned so that only half (or less) of the buildable land is turned into houselots and streets. Homes are built in a less land-consumptive manner that allows the balance of property to be permanently protected and added to an interconnected network of green spaces and green corridors. Included in the volume are model zoning and subdivision ordinance provisions that can help citizens and local officials implement these innovative design ideas.


A Universe from Nothing

A Universe from Nothing

Author: Lawrence Maxwell Krauss

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2013

Total Pages: 226

ISBN-13: 145162445X

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This is a provocative account of the astounding new answers to the most basic philosophical question: Where did the universe come from and how will it end?


Space on Earth

Space on Earth

Author: Charles S. Cockell

Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Published: 2006-11-28

Total Pages: 204

ISBN-13: 0230552323

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Many environmentalists think going into space detracts from solving problems here on Earth. Many astrophysicists feel environmentalism hampers their exploration and settlement of space. Actually environmentalism and space exploration have one and the same objective, argues leading astro-biologist Professor Charles Cockell: to ensure humanity has a home. Cockell calls for a fusion of the two movements as the only way forward. The technologies we develop to live sustainably on Earth, such as wind and solar power, will also establish humanity in space. The exploration of space will provide new resources and skills for the protection of the Earth's environment. For example, studying extreme environments on Earth is helping us to look for life on Mars and satellites orbiting Earth are helping track hurricanes and protect people from natural disasters. There are many books on environmentalism and many on space faring. Space On Earth is the first to provide a new vision of humanity's future bringing these two goals together.


Space. Earth. Human.

Space. Earth. Human.

Author: Alexander Parkhomov

Publisher:

Published: 2019-12-15

Total Pages: 252

ISBN-13: 9781711221212

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DR. ALEXANDER GEORGIEVICH PARKHOMOV graduated from the Moscow Engineering Physics Institute, then he worked at the Department of Radiation Physics of this institute, studying radiation from nuclear reactors. He led a research group at the Moscow Aviation Institute, which studied the properties of ultra-low energy neutrinos, which have completely different properties to those of commonly understood neutrinos. He is the head of the laboratory - department of "Rhythms and fluctuations" at the Institute for the Study of the Nature of Time. He is the author or co-author of more than 200 scientific publications. He is a member of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences and a member of International Society for Condensed Mater Nuclear Science.The book is a tale of discovery and reason in which Dr. Alexander G. Parkhomov walks through fascinating aspects his unique life journey that lead him do discover a new type of penetrating radiation. This radiation permeates all space and is focused by cosmic influences into streams, that ultimately affects many processes occurring on the Earth.Discussing experience of mental control of matter, the book provides evidence of the presence of phenomena far beyond the current understanding of the scientific mainstream.This is not just a discussion of concepts, the book details the making of instruments and explains their scientific basis. These devices were used to prove the reality of this new radiation and address potential criticisms of its existence. Furthermore, he discusses specifically how to potentially synthesise this radiation and how it may be used to deliver, amongst other things, effectively unlimited energy, citing a specific common isotopic preference for this purpose. Dark matter research, from the time of its discovery, was really only of interest to astronomers, cosmologists and exotic scientists. In recent years however, after the accumulation of a "critical mass" of knowledge, it has become clear that this is not just an elusive substance dissolved in an infinite universe, but that it is an important source of connections between space and the biosphere.We are accustomed to the fact that influencing the course of processes implies changing their speed or intensity. This is the basis for all modern technology. Apparently however, there is another type of process variability, which manifests itself in a change in the chaos and order of a systems behaviour; this can occur regardless of energy changes. Perhaps, searching in this direction will allow us to overcome the crisis in modern natural science and open the possibility of a new level of knowledge about the world in which we live.