Profiles more than forty habitat dioramas from the American Museum of Natural History, describing each one's contents and creation and presenting full-color photos and archival images.

Adopting an evidence-based approach, this book uses two state-of-the-art experimental studies to explore nature’s therapeutic benefits in healthcare environments, emphasizing how windows and transparent spaces can strengthen people–nature interactions. High-quality, supportive, and patient-centred healthcare environments are a key priority for healthcare designers worldwide, with ageing populations creating a demand for remodeled and updated facilities. The first study demonstrates individual psychophysiological responses, moods, and preferences in simulated hospital waiting areas with different levels of visual access to nature through windows, while the second experiment uses cutting-edge immersive virtual reality techniques to explore how gardens and nature views impact people’s spatial cognition, wayfinding behaviors, and experience when navigating hospitals. Through these studies and discussions drawing on architectural theory, the book highlights the important benefits of having access to nature from hospital interiors. This concise volume will appeal to academics and designers interested in therapeutic landscapes and healthcare architecture.

Millions of years ago, the North American continent was dragged over the world's largest continental hotspot, a huge column of hot and molten rock rising from the Earth's interior that traced a 50-mile wide, 500-mile-long path northeastward across Idaho. Generating cataclysmic volcanic eruptions and large earthquakes, the hotspot helped lift the Yellowstone Plateau to more than 7,000 feet and pushed the northern Rockies to new heights, forming unusually large glaciers to carve the landscape. It also created the jewel of the U.S. national park system: Yellowstone. Meanwhile, forces stretching apart the western U.S. created the mountainous glory of Grand Teton National Park. These two parks, with their majestic mountains, dazzling geysers, and picturesque hot springs, are windows into the Earth's interior, revealing the violent power of the dynamic processes within. Smith and Siegel offer expert guidance through this awe-inspiring terrain, bringing to life the grandeur of these geologic phenomena as they reveal the forces that have shaped--and continue to shape--the greater Yellowstone-Teton region. Over seventy illustrations--including fifty-two in full color--illuminate the breathtaking beauty of the landscape, while two final chapters provide driving tours of the parks to help visitors enjoy and understand the regions wonders. Fascinating and informative, this book affords us a striking new perspective on Earth's creative forces.

Profiling great aquariums from Vancouver to New Orleans, this stunning volume shares the wonder and discovery of life in the oceans. Behind-the-scenes accounts reveal important aquarium achievements and efforts to rescue endangered animals. Includes a detailed traveler's guide to aquariums around the world. Photos.

Discover how mathematical sequences abound in our natural world in this definitive exploration of the geography of the cosmos You need not be a philosopher or a botanist, and certainly not a mathematician, to enjoy the bounty of the world around us. But is there some sort of order, a pattern, to the things that we see in the sky, on the ground, at the beach? In A Beginner's Guide to Constructing the Universe, Michael Schneider, an education writer and computer consultant, combines science, philosophy, art, and common sense to reaffirm what the ancients observed: that a consistent language of geometric design underpins every level of the universe, from atoms to galaxies, cucumbers to cathedrals. Schneider also discusses numerical and geometric symbolism through the ages, and concepts such as periodic renewal and resonance. This book is an education in the world and everything we can't see within it. Contains numerous b&w photos and illustrations.

Indiana University Bloomington houses exceptional materials from nearly every continent. Windows on Worlds: International Collections at Indiana University takes readers on a visual journey through IU's collections like never before. Ranging in works as diverse as painting, sculpture, costume, rare manuscripts, musical instruments, and much more—the museums, institutes, collections, and other holdings on IU's flagship campus provide unique engagement opportunities for students, researchers, and members of the public. Windows on Worlds showcases the unique and unexpected items from collections across the Bloomington campus, such as the Boulle clock in the Federal Room of the Indiana Memorial Union; the Burmese headdresses in the Mathers Museum of World Culture (now the IU Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology); the fish-shaped coffin in the Sidney and Lois Eskenazi Museum of Art; the rare manuscripts and puzzles of the world-famous Lilly Library; and, finally, new additions on campus like the IU Metz Carillon. Brimming with beautiful photographs, this book offers readers insight into an extraordinary number of cultures and societies through IU's collections.