Life force of nature

My work strives to illustrate the bond between Mother Nature and human beings. Primarily, I seek the harmony created by balanced compositions of natural and man-made objects. Any accidental visual conflict arising from this pairing is also a subject matter I find myself exploring within the execution my pieces. In our high-speed daily lives, we often find ourselves unsettlingly disconnected from nature. Stephen Harrod Buhner describes this feeling as a loss of connection to plants, to the land, to Earth, [that] leaves the holes with which we are naturally born unfilled, and proposes that the solution is reconnection to the natural world and the living intelligence of the land (231). According to him, humans all possess vacancies that are only filled by the living things that have evolved on the earth with us for a million years. I seek to create an answer to this dilemma with my art, creating work that draws from the refreshing vitality of nature. Reflecting the principles in Taoism, a philosophy of harmonious human life with nature, Mother Nature proves to be an abundant inspirational resource for the creation of art. Certainly, humans\u27 appreciation of nature and its sublimity has been expressed in many different forms of art throughout the ages. It is not my goal, however, to simply mimic the outside visual features of nature. Paul Klee said, Art does not reproduce the visible; rather, it makes visible (Chipp 182). Through the human element that is my thoughts and experiences, I seek to transform the superficial features of nature to an expression of its inner values. I find the plants growing in urban settings to be some of the most intriguing objects. In the artificial surroundings of busy cities, I observe the struggle of plants as they attempt to survive and sustain their lives amidst the chaos. Despite the often squalid conditions, the plants successful growth speaks to a strong life force that rivals their counterparts growing in the pristine wilderness. Through the exploration of various media: silver, cotton, fishing line, steel, copper, concrete, plastic, and ceramic, I attempt to illustrate this contrast of nature and the industrialized world. In this thesis, I intend to reveal the inspiration derived from nature, and how these influences and motivations are manifested in the execution of my artwork. Adopting the vitality of nature as a major motif, my jewelry and sculptural pieces serve to express this idea in a tangible form. As an infinite aspect of life, I am convinced that the unlimited energy and vitality of nature could remain a solid foundation for my continuous working process

Integrated pest management of major pests and diseases in eastern Europe and the Caucasus

This book promotes Integrated Pest Management, to contribute to reduced reliance on pesticides and the avoidance of adverse impacts from pesticide use on the health and safety of farming communities, consumers and the environment. Through the IPM approach, technical advice is provided to help plan methods and measures to control major pests and diseases occurring or expected to occur in the countries of Western Asia and Eastern Europe. The specific descriptions contain a short summary of the biology of the species, completed with information on methods and tools of monitoring and control. Preventive control methods are also discussed

Milton\u27s Plant Eyes: Minimal Cognition, Similitude, and Sexuality in the Garden

This essay turns to minimal cognition, a theoretical extension of embodied cognition, to argue for plant sentience in John Milton’s Paradise Lost. Milton imagines plants as minimally cognitive beings within an affective ecosystem, where they readily enter into the epic poem’s complex circuits of desire with appetites of their own. Specifically, the essay claims that botanical cognition arises at the convergence of two seventeenth-century philosophical systems: the first, Milton’s materialist monism, and the second, Paracelsian medicine, which avers a plant’s therapeutic effect on a human body part sharing morphological resemblance. The essay concludes that Milton’s eroticization of similitude enables a new sensus communis where cognition is subtler and where nonhuman desire engenders alternate forms of ecologic communality

Art and science in depicting nature: building a botanical iconography through drawing and photography

O tema proposto centra-se na relação entre Artes Visuais, Natureza e Ciência. Parte do desenho de observação e da imagem fotográfica, com ênfase na fotomicrografia, para estudar as dimensões artística e científica nas representações gráficas da botânica. Com estudos de caso focados sobretudo no período vitoriano no Reino Unido e estendendo-se ao contexto português, a investigação proposta visa explorar as especificidades, paralelismos e complementaridades das variantes da imagem botânica enunciadas. A partir de uma análise de conjunto, propõe-se aferir o potencial dessas imagens para a construção de uma iconografia botânica mais completa e significativa para as áreas da Arte e da Ciência. Centra-se, por isso, no espaço de representação pictórica onde ambas disciplinas se encontram. Este trabalho pretende contribuir para o fomento da produção científica nas áreas de interceção entre Arte e Ciência, associando-se à valorização artística e científica dos elementos da Natureza.The research we will carry out is focused on the interconnection between Visual Arts, Nature and Science. It focuses on observation drawing and the photographic image, with emphases on photomicrography, to study the technical image and the artistic image in the graphic depiction of botany. With case studies focused mainly on the Victorian period in the United Kingdom and extended to the Portuguese context, the proposed research seeks to explore the specificities, parallels and complementarities of these variants of the botanical image. With an integrative analysis as a starting point, we assess the potential of these images for the construction of a more complete and meaningful botanical iconography for the areas of Art and Science. It focuses, therefore, in the space of pictorial representation where both disciplines meet. With this work, we aim to contribute for the promotion of scientific production in the areas of interception between Art and Science, associated with a growing artistic and scientific appreciation of Nature and its elements

A Bronze Kline from Lydia

In 1982, the J. Paul Getty Museum purchased an ancient kline made mostly of bronze (pl. 9, I)1. It replicates, at full scale, a wooden couch with lathe-turned legs, comparable to those attested in the Greek world in the sixth and fifth centuries B.C.E2. As one of only four known bronze beds or couches that pre-date the Hellenistic period3, it is an important artifact that can contribute much to our understanding of ancient furniture and metallurgy, and adhering fragments and pseudomorphs of linen cloth add to the corpus of preserved ancient textiles. The decoration incised on the surfaces of the kline frame offers unique variations upon Archaic ornamental motifs (rosettes, meander bands, and lotus-and- palmette and lotus bud-and-flower chains), in a freehand technique that suggests individual interpretation and adaptation

Deep learning in plant phenological research: A systematic literature review

Climate change represents one of the most critical threats to biodiversity with far-reaching consequences for species interactions, the functioning of ecosystems, or the assembly of biotic communities. Plant phenology research has gained increasing attention as the timing of periodic events in plants is strongly affected by seasonal and interannual climate variation. Recent technological development allowed us to gather invaluable data at a variety of spatial and ecological scales. The feasibility of phenological monitoring today and in the future depends heavily on developing tools capable of efficiently analyzing these enormous amounts of data. Deep Neural Networks learn representations from data with impressive accuracy and lead to significant breakthroughs in, e.g., image processing. This article is the first systematic literature review aiming to thoroughly analyze all primary studies on deep learning approaches in plant phenology research. In a multi-stage process, we selected 24 peer-reviewed studies published in the last five years (2016–2021). After carefully analyzing these studies, we describe the applied methods categorized according to the studied phenological stages, vegetation type, spatial scale, data acquisition- and deep learning methods. Furthermore, we identify and discuss research trends and highlight promising future directions. We present a systematic overview of previously applied methods on different tasks that can guide this emerging complex research field

Current status and future trends of mechanized fruit thinning devices and sensor technology

This paper reviews the different concepts that have been investigated concerning the mechanization of fruit thinning as well as multiple working principles and solutions that have been developed for feature extraction of horticultural products, both in the field and industrial environments. The research should be committed towards selective methods, which inevitably need to incorporate some kinds of sensor technology. Computer vision often comes out as an obvious solution for unstructured detection problems, although leaves despite the chosen point of view frequently occlude fruits. Further research on non-traditional sensors that are capable of object differentiation is needed. Ultrasonic and Near Infrared (NIR) technologies have been investigated for applications related to horticultural produce and show a potential to satisfy this need while simultaneously providing spatial information as time of flight sensors. Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR) technology also shows a huge potential but it implies much greater costs and the related equipment is usually much larger, making it less suitable for portable devices, which may serve a purpose on smaller unstructured orchards. Portable devices may serve a purpose on these types of orchards. In what concerns sensor methods, on-tree fruit detection, major challenge is to overcome the problem of fruits’ occlusion by leaves and branches. Hence, nontraditional sensors capable of providing some type of differentiation should be investigated.This work was developed as part of +Pêssego project which purpose is to promote the innovation and development of peach tree culture in the region of Beira Interior, Portugal. This project was financed by a national rural development and support program, PRODER.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Floral decoration

Floral decoration, like other things, has passed through varying phases of development. In certain stages especially when the hothouse flowers were newer and more of a novelty than at the present time, there were fashions in flowers as well as in clothes