‘Technological nature’ … you mayhave heard this term. .. it’s a term used to describea picture of a natural scene that’s been produced using computer graphics sothat basically it isn’t a real view – say of a garden or field – it’s a virtualone – it’s a picture that looks like a real scene, Now,looking at scenes of nature is known to have an effect on people’s health andwell-being. So for someone who’s ill, for a patient in a hospital, does avirtual view of a garden have the same impact as a real one? Does it have thesame beneficial effects when you look at it? Because that would be good. Well,um, if you test this out, if you put a group of people in a roomwith a real view and another group of people in a room with a virtual view – anunreal view – you can see what happens when they get stressed. If you give bothgroups a task that is slightly stressful and increases their heart rate and, um,what you’ll find is that the people who have the real garden sceneoutside their window to look at – their heart rate goes back to normal morequickly than those of the people in the other group who only have a virtualview to look at. So, yes, there is a difference– people’s recovery from stress is faster in the room with the real view.