Nature in the city

Urban and Architectural Concept This proposal seeks to create a cultural space which is simultaneously a destination and a gateway. By dividing the program into two distinct Figures, rather than a monolithic subdivided block, we allow for a visual and physical connection between the city to the north and Gateway Park to the south. The different character and silhouette of each Figure, along with their verticality, creates visually arresting interstitial spaces and views of city and nature. A third object, the Shroud, connects the two Figures without fusing them into a homogeneous mass. The Museum Figure squishes up into the Canopy, while the Library Figure squishes down into the Canopy from above, creating mysterious elastic formal effects and complex sectional spaces. Despite these local deformations, the cornice height of the Canopy remains at 30M., which is the projected height of the convention center to the north, and also the height limit of the park side setback. This datum creates visual continuity with the urban corridor, helping to avoid the sense of detachment often associated with iconic buildings. The Shroud varies in thickness from razor-thin to thick to allow for structural depth as well as inhabitable spaces. A Sky Deck is located inside the thickest area, connecting the Museum and Library at mid-level and allowing views out over Gateway Park. The design of the skin is influenced by the craft of stitching and seaming in fashion design, where joints are often employed for their visual figuration rather than simply to attach pieces of fabric together. The Shroud is broken down into a patchwork of super-joints which are sometimes real and sometimes fake. Super-joints sometimes track with underlying geometry and sometimes ignore it. The result is a chunky, varied tapestry rather than a relentless panelization aesthetic. By pushing much of the building program into the ground, and lifting the rest up into the Figures and the Shroud, we are able to open up the ground and allow Gateway Park to flow into the site. This loosely bounded space is a sanctuary, featuring green space as well as protection from sun and rain in the harsh tropical environment of Taichung. This sanctuary can be shared by both buildings to host cultural events such as festivals, art markets, and book fairs.

Today, the facture not only are showed in the museums, but the more are showed in our life. With admeasurement is getting much bigger and bigger, besides, they have had discovered variant purposes thanks to the different organizers, it couldn’t be ignored in period society. The Literatures view came form the museum, discovering development relationship between the museum and art, art’s performances and the museums` trajectory as well as quote case study analyzed about exhibit industrial production situation. By reviewing the art history, we could point that antinomy of mechanism between the artist and the museum, which made the art highway around a theme , that is“ Art and Life”. No matter it’s far away from facility or back to society, all of these are one of the reason to encourage art performances getting popular. If we had went back to find understanding the art and the change of exhibit style, we also could use annals to analyze the art performance except for Taiwan’s museums and generalized two main questions: communicate with environment, partake with audience and quoted people had referred to discuss.Fubon Art Foundation “Very Fun Park”performed for many times, whom developed so well till now, it`s also few industries as the entrepreneur to exhibit the show, which emphasizing variety in the ground, making some linking with art and business affection that in east area. Above-mentioned the two questions analyzed “Very Fun Park”, bring out the difference of exhibition, feature, and affection. Afterward, people discovered Fubon Art Foundation’s way about the ways of activated and involved roles in the exhibits, which totally switched relationship between brew exhibits and create of art, getting to derive the Donate in the exhibit that had engaged Commercialization Art Biology structure, agreeing Jean Baudrillard`s expression, inquiring the way of commercial mechanism brought to art exhibit, and offered related savor review, and offered related savor review, and conformity to compromises as adjustments According to the collusion and conformity whom had found out, and offered related suggestions and introspection, and changing the museums` alteration and situation by showing the museum to improve art mechanism intension.

As a follow-up to the theme of integration between architecture and nature discussed in the previous issues of Project Baikal, the article gives a definition of the principle of environmental interconnection. It also presents the geneses and the state-of-the-art of the ideas and practices based on this complex and dialectically contradictory principle. The author analyses the evolution of different ways of penetration of natural environment into the inner space of architectural structures. He also studies the development of the idea of openness of architectural structures toward natural environment, including the means of differentiation and regulation of openness and transformable facades and roofs.

The article provides historical background for Alexander von Humboldt’s expedition into Russia in 1829. It includes information on Humboldt’s works and publications in Russia over the course of his lifetime, as well as an explanation of the Russian scientific community’s response to those works. Humboldt’s ideas on the existence of an active volcano in Central Asia attracted the attention of two prominent Russian geographers, P. Semenov and P. Kropotkin, whose views on the nature of volcanism were quite different. P. Semenov personally met Humboldt in Berlin. P. Kropotkin made one of the most important geological discoveries of the 19th Century: he found the fresh volcanic cones near Lake Baikal. Soon after Humboldt’s Russian expedition, and partly as a result of it, an important mineral was found in the Ilmen mountains – samarskite, which later gave its name to the chemical element Samarium, developed in 1879. At the beginning of the 20th Century, the Russian scientist V. Vernadskiy pointed out that samarskite was the first uranium-rich mineral found in Russia.

This thesis explores how museums can effectively negotiate the ethical and children’s rights issues involved in the acquisition, interpretation and display of contemporary photographs of children. It does so in consideration of a heightened sensitivity towards child protection that has inspired a struggle for museums in the UK to adopt transparent and confident decision-making processes in their curatorial approaches around such images. This struggle is particularly fraught when photographs of children express a bodily awareness: a marker of the transition from childhood to adulthood.By advancing an ethically-informed discourse around freedom of speech and the sitter’s agency, the research aims to encourage more resilient and responsible decision-making amongst museums and galleries. Significantly, the thesis develops a language and a framework within which such a dialectic can take place.The research is interdisciplinary in nature and, building on the new museum ethics discourse, draws on the experiences of museum practitioners in the US, UK and Europe – including curators, directors and educators. Firmly grounded within everyday museum practice, it identifies innovative curatorial strategies that exchange self-censorship for a more socially relevant way of interpreting and exhibiting photographs of children. The thesis advocates approaches that enable children and young people to express their own perspectives on the ways in which they are represented today.Adopting qualitative research methods, the research relies on interviews and case studies. These include a number of ‘silent’ cases introduced by museum informants that reveal how self-censorship operates through external and internal barriers, and two case studies that embrace curatorial strategies that explore alternative ways forward (at The North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh, US and the Fotomuseum in The Hague, The Netherlands).

Aquarium Finisterrae is a clear example of what is known today as “new museum”. Its interactivity and its many activities, allow access to all citizens in order to promote the participation and critical thinking ahead to the actions of man with the environment. One of the most sought after are the Aquarium of the guided tours. From the analysis in the first person and the information rescued from interviews with teachers, professionals and visitors, give to know the importance of this museum, as well as the views guided the same for the public visitors.

Although biodiversity and ecosystem functions are strongly shaped by contemporary environments, such as climate and local biotic and abiotic attributes, relatively little is known about how they depend on long-term geological processes. Here, along a 3000-m elevational gradient with tectonic faults on the Tibetan Plateau (that is, Galongla Mountain in Medog County, China), we study the joint effects of geological and contemporary environments on biological communities, such as the diversity and community composition of plants and soil bacteria, and ecosystem functions. We find that these biological communities and ecosystem functions generally show consistent elevational breakpoints at 2000–2800 m, which coincide with Indus-Yalu suture zone fault and are similar to the elevational breakpoints of soil bacteria on another mountain range 1000 km away. Mean annual temperature, soil pH and moisture are the primary contemporary determinants of biodiversity and ecosystem functions, which support previous findings. However, compared with the models excluding geological processes, inclusion of geological effects, such as parent rock and weathering, increases 67.9 and 35.9% of the explained variations in plant and bacterial communities, respectively. Such inclusion increases 27.6% of the explained variations in ecosystem functions. The geological processes thus provide additional links to ecosystem properties, which are prominent but show divergent effects on biodiversity and ecosystem functions: parent rock and weathering exert considerable direct effects on biodiversity, whereas indirectly influence ecosystem functions via interactions with biodiversity and contemporary environments. Thus, the integration of geological processes with environmental gradients could enhance our understanding of biodiversity and, ultimately, ecosystem functioning across different climatic zones.

Since the global financial crisis in 2008, complementary currencies - from local initiatives like the Brixton Pound to timebanks, business-to-business currencies and, of course, Bitcoin - have received unprecedented attention by academics, policy makers, the media and the general public. However, at close theoretic inspection money itself remains as elusive a phenomenon as water must be to fish. Economic and business disciplines commonly only describe the use and functionality of money rather than its nature. Sociology and philosophy have a more fundamental set of approaches, but remain largely unintegrated in financial policy and common perception. At the same time, new forms of currency challenge predominant definitions of money and their implementation in the law and financial regulation. Unless our understanding of money and currencies is questioned and extended to consistently reflect theory and practice, its current misalignment threatens to impede much needed reform and innovation of the financial systems towards equity, democratic participation and sustainability. After reviewing current monetary theories and their epistemological underpinning, this thesis proposes a new theoretic framework of money as a ‘discursive institution’ that can be applied coherently to all monetary phenomena, conventional and unconventional. It also allows for the empirical analysis of currencies with the methodologies of neo-institutionalism, practice theory and critical discourse analysis. This will here be demonstrated in a transdisciplinary triangulation concerning three sets of data from the diverse field of complementary currencies, the publications of the Bank of England and monetary laws from the United States. The findings do not only demonstrate the heuristic value of the theory of discursive institutionalism in regard to money and complementary currencies, but highlight how regulatory and legal definitions even of conventional money lack the coherence and clarity required to appropriately explicate monetary innovation. Accordingly, this study concludes with recommendations for monetary theory, policy and research that can address the current inconsistencies.

The flora in the Republic of Croatia is rich with p lant species due to its climate conditions and geographical location. Edible fruit species contain ing a great amount of various vitamins, antioxidanc e and minerals are of a significant importance in creatin g biodiversity of species. Escpecially important ar e representatives of wild edible berries. In order to preserve the biodiversity it is necessa ry to protect the interesting plant material (in si tu) and to generate a collection (ex situ) ‐ gene bank to be used in breeding programmes. The adaptability to edaphic and climatic conditions is an advantage of this mat erial in breeding programme. Researches were carried out in July a nd September 2007 in the area of Nature Park Medvednica, with an aim to determine the presence of Rubus sp, their determination and their disposition in t he Nature Park Medvednica. This research has determined seven types of Rubus sp. and their location in Nature Park Medvednica is presented on corresponding map. The species Rubus discolor L. was found the most prevalent. For this reason the chemical and pomological analysis of Rubus discolor fruits were carried out. Chemical analysis included measurment of total soluble solid (TSS) and total a cidity (TA). Monitoring of pomological traits in th is experiment covered fruit weight, height and width, and number of druplets.

Stained Glass Windows from Grodziec. Part I The group of 14 stained glass windows from Grodziec (Groditzberg, Groditzburg) near Zlotoryja in the Lower Silesia provides an interesting illustration of Polish and Silesian monuments’ intricate fortunes after the end of World War II. In December 1945, one part of the group (8 panels) landed in Krakow. At first, it became the property of the Wawel State Art Collection. Then, it was transferred to the Jagiellonian University Museum, by which it is still owned. In 1966, the other part of the group (6 panels) was made over to the Silesian Museum, later called the National Museum in Wroclaw. The stained glass windows from Grodziec constitute also an example of interesting issues from the fields of art conservation studies, museology and restoration. The panels of stained glass from the beginning of the 15th century, representing Madonna and Child, Man of Sorrows, Virgin Mary and the Angel Gabriel, Apostles and Saints in architectural frames, became part of the decor of the castle in Grodziec, of a baroque palace situated at the feet of the castle hill and of one pavilion in the palace park. Gradually reconstructed from the beginning of the 19th century and then, in the years 1906–1908, rebuilt in the romantic style by B. Ebhard, the castle started being decorated with stained glass windows in the 1830s. Six sections from the group have already been exhibited in the rooms of the Krakow Jagiellonian University Museum for many years. In the course of historical research, it has turned out that presumably also other stained glass windows, currently belonging to the University Museum, come from Grodziec: twelve smaller sections representing the Passion and the scene of Saint Clare’s death, from ca. 1490, made in the Nuremberg workshop of Michael Wolgemut, and two Late Renaissance stained glass windows representing the figures of Saint Peter and Saint James, from a Rhineland workshop. The fourteen medieval stained glass windows of Austrian origins, coming from Grodziec and now belonging to the Krakow and Wroclaw museums’ collections, currently undergo physical and chemical analysis. Historical research is also being conducted thanks to the financial support of the National Science Centre. Three sections from the Wroclaw collection were already preserved and restored in 2013 thanks to a grant from the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage, another three underwent conservation in the conservation studio of The Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow in the years 2013 and 2014.

Effects of prescribed burning on soil and vegetation

One of the greatest challenges in science lies in disentangling causality in complex, coupled systems. This is illustrated no better than in the dynamic interplay between the Earth and life. The early evolution and diversification of animals occurred within a backdrop of global change, yet reconstructing the potential role of the environment in this evolutionary transition is challenging. In the 200 million years from the end-Cryogenian to the Ordovician, enigmatic Ediacaran fauna explored body plans, animals diversified and began to biomineralize, forever changing the ocean's chemical cycles, and the biological community in shallow marine ecosystems transitioned from a microbial one to an animal one. In the following dissertation, a multi-faceted approach combining macro- and micro-scale analyses is presented that draws on the sedimentology, geochemistry and paleontology of the rocks that span this transition to better constrain the potential environmental changes during this interval. In Chapter 1, the potential of clumped isotope thermometry in deep time is explored by assessing the importance of burial and diagenesis on the thermometer. Eocene- to Precambrian-aged carbonates from the Sultanate of Oman were analyzed from current burial depths of 350-5850 meters. Two end-member styles of diagenesis independent of burial depth were observed. Chapters 2, 3 and 4 explore the fallibility of the Ediacaran carbon isotope record and aspects of the sedimentology and geochemistry of the rocks preserving the largest negative carbon isotope excursion on record---the Shuram Excursion. Chapter 2 documents the importance of temperature, fluid composition and mineralogy on the delta 18-O min record and interrogates the bulk trace metal signal. Chapter 3 explores the spatial variability in delta 13-C recorded in the transgressive Johnnie Oolite and finds a north-to-south trend recording the onset of the excursion. Chapter 4 investigates the nature of seafloor precipitation during this excursion and more broadly. We document the potential importance of microbial respiratory reactions on the carbonate chemistry of the sediment-water interface through time. Chapter 5 investigates the latest Precambrian sedimentary record in carbonates from the Sultanate of Oman, including how delta 13-C and delta 34-S CAS vary across depositional and depth gradients. A new model for the correlation of the Buah and Ara formations across Oman is presented. Isotopic results indicate delta 13-C varies with relative eustatic change and delta 34-S CAS may vary in absolute magnitude across Oman. Chapter 6 investigates the secular rise in delta 18-Omin in the early Paleozoic by using clumped isotope geochemistry on calcitic and phosphatic fossils from the Cambrian and Ordovician. Results do not indicate extreme delta 18-O seawater depletion and instead suggest warmer equatorial temperatures across the early Paleozoic.

The Greek culture was enormously influenced by the Minoan culture, as was its foundation stone. It had been developing in Crete from the 3rd millennium to 2ndmillennium BC and being an ode to joy and life. The frescoes representing noble dresses and jewelry of Cretan females, pleasure in sports activities and nature, as well as serene and happy people are genuine masterpieces. A substantial number of sites with remains of Minoan culture have been discovered on the island of Crete. Pendlebury, a renowned British archaeologist, listed nearly sixty sites of that type in the first phase, above twenty in the second and above sixty in the last phase of Minoan age. The well-known and most significant sites of Minoan culture are Knossos,Festos, Malia, Zakros and Agia Hagia Triada. The most interesting archaeological site is the Palace of Knossos reconstructed with its surroundings, including the cereal storerooms, porches and gardens. The Palace of Knossos, with its Grand Staircase with columns, numerous rooms and the throne room, was the palace of the oldest kingdom in Europe. The elegant throne with its high back, carved in stone has been standing in the same place, flanked by the Griffin (mythological creature half lion, half eagle) fresco. Today, the Minoan culture might be observed at archaeological sites and museums, which have been successfully valorized for tourism purposes. H. du Cros model for tourism valorization will be used to highlight what makes a successful tourism valorization of archaeological sites and museums representing the Minoan culture from the aspect of tourism. Moreover, subindicators in tourism sector analyzing market attractiveness and importance factors in tourism product design as well as management sector analyzing cultural significance and robustness will be applied. Key words: Minoan culture, archaeological sites, museums, management.

Abstract. Azarbaijan is a cold region and an appropriate designing is required to reduce energy consumption and using local material. Therefore , the local culture of region, aesthetic and respect to the nature should be focused. The main purpose of this study is to focus on the green architecture in relation to design building in the cold region toward sustainable development and issues including form of building, kind of material, using green architecture and parks and how to place the building based on local culture. to the necessity of reducing energy consumption is a method to reduce the environmental stress. It should be noted that making green space and parks in different parts of city to access sustainable development and preventing the disaster for future generations cannot be done without focusing on the nature. Sustainable architecture is an approach in which several issues should be focused including quality, focusing on the future and environment, using appropriate material and regarding standards to reduce the energy.

In this first study of soil-eating behavior in Formosan macaques, we attempted to test the mineral supplementation hypothesis, and to document macaques using excavation sites at both the individual and social group levels. We observed macaques’ soil-eating behavior from October 1999 to January 2000 at Shoushan Nature Park in southern Taiwan, and compared the chemical compositions of soils from their excavation sites with those of randomly selected topsoils that were not eaten by macaques in the study area. Our results show that soils from excavation sites contained significantly higher levels of calcium than did topsoils taken from randomly selected sites. This provides evidence to support the mineral supplementation hypothesis. However, alternative hypotheses such as the treatment of diarrhea/endoparasites, detoxification, and behavioral tradition could not be excluded from explaining the occurrence of soil-eating behavior in Formosan macaques. At both the individual and social group levels, a behavioral tradition may play a particularly important role in affecting the choices of excavation sites where soil is eaten. Further research on the exact cues of excavation sites which stimulate soil-eating behavior is needed to clarify this suggestion.