Resilient Green
With spring arrives an increased desire to flee the confines of one’s cubicle—or, second best, to bring the outdoors in. The following plants are fighters: those most likely to survive the harsh conditions of cubicle life. While all plants need the proper amounts of light, temperature, humidity and water, some species are more shade-tolerant and resilient than others.
Heartleaf Philodendron (Philodendron scandens): Thrives under florescent lights, hardy, long-lasting.
Golden Pothos or Devil’s Ivy (Epipremnum aureum): Tolerates low light, low humidity and dry soil; aggressive grower.
Peace Lily (Spathiphyllum wallisii): Tolerates low light and dry air; great for purifying indoor air.
Lucky Bamboo (Dracaena sanderiana): Grows in a vase with water and pebbles; prefers low light.
Cactus (Cactaceae family): Prefers sun but will tolerate florescent lights and dry soil.
Source: guide-to-houseplants.com/office-plants.html
Women Pinned
Last month, Pinterest’s unique monthly visitors topped 11 million—the fastest standalone website to top the 10 million mark, writes prdaily.com. The virtual pinboard site was built to help organize the chaotic nature of the Internet, specifically visual images, around the passions of its users. With an 80-percent female user base, reports she-conomy.com, perhaps Pinterest is the answer to the similar, user-generated but male-dominated Reddit.
From Tech To Riches
Technology is number two on this year’s list of the ways that American billionaires became rich, says forbes.com. Second only to “investments,” 51 of the 425 Americans on the World’s Billionaires List credit the tech industry for their wealth. In its “Best Jobs of 2012” list, U.S. News & World Report also hypes the tech field: programmers, systems analysts, web developers and database administrators dominate the top ten. Read the whole list at money.usnews.com.
To Be Invisible
Harvard University researchers have developed a process which “advances nanoscale metal lithography into three dimensions…at a resolution… practical for metamaterials,” the Harvard Gazette reports. In layman’s terms, that means everyone’s dream superpower is nearly a reality—the discovery is an essential step towards creating so-called “invisibility cloaks.” In related news, researchers at the University of Manchester developed a device to “cloak” structures with pressurized rubber to prevent the waves of an earthquake from “seeing” buildings. Similar research out of UC-Berkeley renders ships “invisible” from turbulent water during storms: if “‘the wave vector of the ripple cloak equals the difference in the wave vectors of the interfacial and surface waves,’ a rough wave approaching a vessel will suddenly disappear—and pass far below the vessel,” writes wired.com.
