Workplace stress costs American businesses up to $190 billion every year in healthcare alone ||

Incorporating nature into the workplace can take many different forms including living green walls, indoor trees and planter boxes. Just being able to see nature has been shown to increase both self-esteem and mood, particularly among younger people.                    
[Attention and concentration is not the same thing. Concentration is exclusion while attention excludes nothing] 
 ~Attention restoration theory suggests that looking at nature can cause the brain to shift into a different mode of processing. Researchers studied brain scans of people who were randomly assigned to look at pictures of a green meadow or a concrete roof for 40 seconds. Even this brief glimpse of nature was enough to shift the brain into a more relaxed mode.

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How a Hydraulic Boardwalk Is Giving Istanbul Its Waterfront Back ...

For all their vaunted proximity to the seas that have shaped their ancient city, locals feel the absence of nature keenly in Istanbul. A master plan by Gensler and U.S.-based design firm Dror will reintegrate Istanbul's waterfront within the ancient city's urban fabric for the first time in centuries.

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Closing in on the secrets of plant photosynthesis |

The new technique essentially has brought the picture into sharper focus. What the technicians see is a system in which "antenna" proteins capture light and feed them into a kind of molecular reactor. One difficulty with fully understanding the process is that, unlike the parts of a solar panel, which are rigid and designed to last, the crucial proteins in the photosystem of a plant are dynamic, and don't last very long before they fall apart. The plant then regenerates these structures. "Even though nature has had millions of years to develop and optimize photosynthesis, there are still outstanding and unknown questions about how photosynthesis operates. It's truly a scientific challenge."

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Plant-e Generates Energy from Living Plants |

Living plants generate electricity; more specifically, energy can come in the form of a byproduct of photosynthesis in plants. All that is needed is light, carbon dioxide and water. Plant-e is a company that builds on that potential source of energy, aiming to do business with products that can generate electricity from plants. Read More |

Ecosystems need maths not random nature to survive |

A previously unknown mathematical property has been found to be behind one of nature's greatest mysteries – how ecosystems survive. Found in nature and common to all ecosystems the property, Trophic Coherence, is a measure of how plant and animal life interact within the food web of each ecosystem – providing scientists with the first ever mathematical understanding of their architecture and how food webs are able to grow larger while also becoming more stable. Read More:

Plant engineered for more efficient photosynthesis |

"It is an important first step in creating plants with more efficient photosynthesis," Hanson said.
"This is the first time that a plant has been created through genetic engineering to fix all of its carbon by a cyanobacterial enzyme," said Maureen Hanson, a co-author of the study and Liberty Hyde Bailey Professor of Plant Molecular Biology at Cornell.

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7 ways to get lost in the joy of autumn |

Fall’s Most Amazing Corn Mazes |

The Adventure Continues:

Flavorless but enduring, dominant and unchallengeable, yet elementally enhancing the flavor of life |

Water is the most basic resource on the planet. Now consider it in its elemental form | Read More:

UN: Nature's diversity fast disappearing:

New York - The natural systems that support life on earth, from the Amazon forests to coral reefs, are close to the tipping point of collapse because of human activities, a new study on the global biodiversity said Monday.
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