It's an everyday experience shared by many that nature can be of help in relieving pain, reducing stress, support mental recovery etc. In the last three decades or so this experience has also found support in a large number of scientific investigations. Among other things the experience of nature has been shown to reduce stress and pain in patients and to boost concentration and reduce impulsive behavior in children. Most of this research however has mainly been concerned with the visual modality. In this thesis the aim has been to focus on the auditory modality in this context by trying to reveal some effects on people from the exposure of nature sounds played indoors in three different environments: a grammar school class room, a kindergarten play room and a post-surgery wake up room at an intensive care unit.

Nature and garden have always had meaning in human's life and succesfully seen as having health giving effects. Health is a state of equilibrium between physical, psychological, social and spiritual well-being. The individual's health is depending of how the society looks and how the individual manages to live her life in it. Stress is one of our time's large public health problems and leads in some cases to burned out syndrome. Stay in nature gives recovery according to theories of environmental psychology.

AbstractThe purpose of my study is to examine how preschool children experience nature and how the educationalists at the preschool can make nature more exciting and support the children?s personal growth. I have also studied what the educationalists of the preschool do and what they can do to make nature more interesting and playful for the children. Observations and interviews have been conducted at a preschool in a small town. The preschool is situated close to nature, that is, close to a small forested area.

In metropolitan areas where the exploitation pressure increases, also the importance to point out nature areas grows, both for the sake of outdoor life and for biodiversity conservation. Since nature conservancy and spatial planning constitute two different parts of the municipalities land use control, a case study has been carried out in two municipalities in the Stockholm region, Huddinge and Järfälla. Both these municipalities have protected about one third of their land and today there are plans to repeal parts of the reserves to enable exploitation. This thesis shows ? from the theoretical concept of sustainable development ? officials, politicians and non-governmental organizations perspectives on questions concerning land use together with the work with nature reserves and repeals.

Around 85 percent of the total population in Sweden today lives in an urban environment. This means that the nature within the urban areas has come to play an important role for the human well being. At the broader picture, the nature within urban areas is profitable in many ways. It is therefore important for the municipalities around in Sweden to work for sustainability within the urban areas. Linköping adopted an environmental policy, in year 2001, from the delegate of the municipality.

Nature?s Best is a quality-label for Swedish Eco-tourism. It is one of very few active ecotourism labels and the only one that claims quality as its main focus. The objective of this thesis is to evaluate the certification scheme Nature?s Best with regards to the values the certification creates for the companies that certify their products.

The purpose of this master thesis is to examine how the relationship between humans and nature is expressed in the imaginative literature. My aim is to identify ideological reproductions in the analyzed works. Therefore I have chosen one work from late 19th century and one from late 20th century. This makes it possible to examine the contextual anchorage of the found ideological expressions. The study?s theoretical framework is primarily based on ecocriticism, and especially on Greg Garrard?s and Kate Soper?s thoughts.

The objective of this study was to contribute with suggestions of nature preservation managements of selected forest objects of high nature values managed by the Swedish state-owned forest company Sveaskog. Many forests with high natural potential are relatively rare today due to modern forestry, where wood production is the main purpose. Sveaskog?s policy is to consider and to priority nature conservation on valuable objects. This assessment includes objects that in the future may develop into nature reserves.

Background Children spend much of their time outdoor at preschool. Preschool's mission is to provide children with a rich environment that is enjoyable, and that arouses their interest to learn new skills. Since motor skills and health are positively affected by the outdoor environment should kids get a good turnout at their preschool playgrounds as possible.Theoretical perspectives My study is based on theories from a socio-cultural perspective. The socio-cultural context is part of the outdoor environment because we experience and perceive nature depends on the society we live in and how we interact togetherPurpose I want to see what kind of vision teachers and parents have on the outdoor environment when it comes to children's learning and development. I also want to find out how the teachers are using the outdoors environment and find out the parents' reason, when it comes to choice of preschool.Methodology The work is based on qualitative interviews with two teachers and two parents from each preschool.

In the project Echoing Nature i have searched a design for an exhibi¬tion concept. That visualizes the natural phenomenon of self-assem¬bling materials in a simplified way. My question is, how can you emo¬tionally re-connect the modern man to nature and raise awareness. I assume my thesis that the experience of a natural phenomenon can inspire us to see a bigger context, provoke curiosity and generate an initial sense of belonging to nature. The result is an interactive sculp¬ture that consists of 3-dimensional Tetris blocks.

The aim of   the study has been to examine the duality that I seemed to find in Karin   Broos works, primarily on the basis of her renditions of nature. The   objective is to study the duality on various plans and to examine which   traces of Intertextuality that may exist.In the study of the duality   I have taken note of how nature is presented in terms of style and form, as   well as that I have seeked cultural references pictorial and symbolic. I have   also examined the images with reference to Intertextuality. The following   questions has been applied during the work:  How is nature produced in the paintings?  What place occupies nature in relation to the people, in the works?  What is being communicated by nature's participation in the works?As a method, and as a   tool for analysis and interpretation of selected works, I have chosen to use   Panofskys iconological interpretative method. As a guide to seek relations of   intertextuality the theories of  Julia   Kristeva has been useful, which  includes thoughts  that new images are created or re-created   in relation to other images all the time and in new contexts.As a result of the   study I have found some kind of expression of balance, though it did not   seemed to look that way from the beginning.

This thesis puts together general guidelines for the design of outdoor environment at nursing homes for people with dementia. The goal is to give the residents a greater quality of life with the garden.The garden must be safe and secure while offering places for fellowship or retirement and experiences of joy and competence. The plant material and other elements in the garden are inserted to stimulate the senses and to inspire to different activities. The paper describes the health promoting effects of nature and gardens by referring to scientific studies. These studies encompass the impact of nature on all human beings as well as how the outdoor environment affects our target group, elderly people with dementia. An essential part of the work focus on the conditions in a garden for people with dementia, on the contact between residence and garden and the access to surrounding life. Eventually, the general guidelines are applied to a real building project ? the Vega project in Lomma,a new nursing home for persons with dementia.

Scientific research shows that humans regain their strength when they are spending time in nature. Ulrich, Kaplan & Kaplan, among others, has shown in their research that nature can reduce stress and decrease the after effects of stress. Lund University Hospital, USiL, is a big working place and has a large number of patients. To be a patient often means that you lose control of your daily life which could cause stress. For the personnel high workload can be a stress factor.

The purpose of my study is to describe how educators think about the play environment, the nature and its importance for the children's development and learning in preschool. The study is based on qualitative interviews with four active educators. The results of the study show that the teachers regarded the children's interests to a great extent when the different play environments were structured. They are also based on different themes that they have seen that the children were interested in, such as the fire station, hair salon or shop and café. Educators designing not only these play areas for different types of play for the children, but the different environments also have a learning purpose. The outdoor environment however attracts greater interest from children, to where they have more space to move freely in and outdoors, there are no limits to the children.

The purpose of this essay has been to seek understanding of how young people in high school and adult education experience the use of educational media tools in teaching. Examples of questions submitted material has been: What are the positive and negative experiences of ICT in the classroom?The essay is of a qualitative nature, in which five students were interviewed about their experiences of ICT in the school environment. The result is analyzed from a sociocultural perspective and from an inward-student perspective.The results showed that students felt that it was difficult to absorb many of the ICT facilities as sources of knowledge in the school environment. Due to lack of quality in teaching material and difficulties of the pupils to sort out the important information of the injected..