Nokia unveils bicycle-powered phone charger

The charger and phone holder for the Nokia Bicycle Charger Kit attach to a bike’s front handlebars.

(Credit: Nokia)

Nokia unveiled on Thursday a bicycle-powered phone charger.

The Nokia Bicycle Charger Kit, which can be attached to any bicycle, powers up from the pedaling motion of the bike’s rider. A dynamo–the electricity generator–is powered by the front bicycle wheel as a rider pedals and transfers electricity to a charger attached to the handlebar, which a phone plugs into.

“To begin charging, a cyclist needs to travel around six kilometers per hour (four miles per hour), and while charging times will vary depending on battery model, a 10-minute journey at 10 kilometers per hour (six miles per hour) produces around 28 minutes of talk time or 37 hours of standby time. The faster you ride, the more battery life you generate,” Nokia said in a statement.

The charger can be used to power any Nokia phone with a 2mm power jack, according to Nokia.

The Nokia bicycle charger comes with a dynamo that attaches to a bike’s fork and generates electricity as a rider pedals.

(Credit: Nokia)

The kit comes with two small brackets, in addition to the charger and generator. One bracket attaches to the bicycle’s handlebars to secure the charger and a cell phone holder. The other secures the small electric generator to the bike’s fork.

The world’s largest maker of cell phones said in a statement that its new product will provide “free and environmentally friendly electricity for mobile phones” and will likely be welcomed in areas of the world where bicycles are a transportation staple.

Priced at about $18, the charging kit is set to be available from Nokia online and Nokia phone retailers by year’s end.

While its certainly newsworthy that Nokia is offering a bicycle charger, it follows others. In 2007, Motorola demonstrated abike-powered charger at the Consumer Electronics Show. In September, Dahon unveiled the $99 Biologic FreeChargefor charging small electronic gadgets by connecting to any existing dynamo hub on a bike.

Nokia’s announcement came in conjunction with the release of the Nokia C2, a cell phone capable of holding and operating two SIM cards at once to allow for separate phone numbers to be used from one device simultaneously. The dual-SIM C2 allows the user to not only switch between SIM cards, but even swap one SIM card for another, while the phone is on and working.

Reference Link : http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-20006677-54.html

Courtesy : CNET News

Pacific islands growing, not sinking

Kiribati is one of the Pacific islands thought to be at risk from rising sea levels (Source: Cedric Favero/Flickr)

Climate scientists have expressed surprise at findings that many low-lying Pacific islands are growing, not sinking.

Islands in Tuvalu, Kiribati and the Federated States of Micronesia are among those which have grown, largely due to coral debris, land reclamation and sediment.

The findings, published in the journal Global and Planetary Change, were gathered by comparing changes to 27 Pacific islands over the last 20 to 60 years using historical aerial photos and satellite images.

Auckland University‘s Associate Professor Paul Kench, a member of the team of scientists, says the results challenge the view that Pacific islands are sinking due to rising sea levels associated with climate change.

“Eighty per cent of the islands we’ve looked at have either remained about the same or, in fact, gotten larger,” he says.

“Some of those islands have gotten dramatically larger, by 20% or 30%.

“We’ve now got evidence the physical foundations of these islands will still be there in 100 years.”

Kench says the growth of the islands can keep pace with rising sea levels.

“The reason for this is these islands are so low lying that in extreme events waves crash straight over the top of them,” he says.

“In doing that they transport sediment from the beach or adjacent reef platform and they throw it onto the top of the island.”

But Kench says this does not mean climate change does not pose dangers.

“The land may still be there but will they still be able to support human habitation?” he saks.

Surprise finding

Adelaide University climate scientist Professor Barry Brook says he is surprised by the findings.

“Sea levels are obviously rising – I think in the short term [the study] suggests that there’s maybe more time to do something about the problem than we’d first anticipated,” he says.

“But the key problem is that sea level rise is likely to accelerate much beyond what we’ve seen in the 20th century.”

Naomi Thirobaux, from Kiribati, has studied the shape of Pacific islands for her PhD and says no-one should be lulled into thinking erosion and inundation is not taking its toll and displacing people from their land.

“In a populated area what would happen was that if it’s eroding, a few metres would actually displace people,” she says.

“In a populated place people can’t move back or inland because there’s hardly any place to move into, so that’s quite dramatic.”

Both Kench and Brook and scientists agree further rises in sea levels pose a significant danger to the livelihoods of people living in Tuvalu, Kirabati and the Federated States of Micronesia.

Reference Link
http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2010/06/03/2916981.htm?site=science&topic=latest

Courtesy
ABC

Smile, forgive and forget and be a little more Zambian

Zambians have a remarkable ability to set aside grievances and move on – people actually seem to find it hard to bear a grudge.

The Zambian way: Smile, shake hands and act like it never happened

I had a run-in with the police not long ago.

I had been ordered to pull off the road by an officer who said his camera had clocked me speeding. But I had been pootling along well under the limit and was sceptical about the policeman’s motivation. After all, checkpoints are a well-known source of extra income in Zambia.

So I kicked up a fuss, tried to inspect the speed camera and questioned other, more docile motorists about the speed they had been doing when stopped.

The police officers were furious.

One threatened to lock me up, but settled for scolding me with the most scathing insult she could muster: “You have problems. Take them to hell, not to the police.”

I was still feeling irritated when driving out of town the next day, a mood not improved by being done for speeding – again – by the same police team. A fair cop this time.

As the Zambian proverb has it, ‘Two thighs will always rub together’

I steeled myself for a humiliating dose of sarcasm, or smugness at least. Instead, a cheery face appeared at the window.

“Hello again,” said the policeman, with no trace of animosity. “How are you today?”

I paid the fine, he waved me off, and I spent the next 100km of my journey marvelling at the remarkable ability of so many Zambians to let bygones be bygones.

But there is an expectation of forgiveness in Zambia.

One Zambia, One Nation

A friend of mine was visited by a former employee who he had sacked for stealing.

The guy wanted his job back. “Surely you didn’t say yes?” I asked my friend.

“I did,” he replied, seemingly as surprised as I was, adding: “It was like he thought yesterday shouldn’t have any bearing on today.”

Certainly Zambians have had a lot of practice at putting the past behind them.

The decades of British colonialism, for instance, which at its worst, institutionalised the second class status of local people.

A small example – Europeans were allowed into the butchery to select the choice meat. The less appetising cuts were sold to Zambians through a hatch.

Yet these days, race relations are very good.

Or how about the bombing raids by the Rhodesian air force in the years before Zimbabwe fought its way into existence?

Now large numbers of “Rhodies”, as they are known, have been welcomed into Zambia since being hounded off their farms by Mugabe.

Then there is the woeful mismanagement of the country by political leaders.

Mr Kaunda came to power in 1964 after Zambia gained independence

First among them was Kenneth Kaunda, founding father of the nation, and now at 86, elevated to demi-god status.

I went to a talk where he was guest of honour.

The audience was made up of 40-something professionals, sharp-suited and hard-nosed.

As Kenneth Kaunda reached the podium and danced his trademark jig, the crowd swooned.

“One Zambia,” he called to them. “One Nation,” they chorused happily.

This catechism may be Kenneth Kaunda’s greatest legacy.

He managed to forge a shared identity for a country made up of more than 70 tribes. But he also presided over economic collapse.

By the time he permitted genuine elections in 1991, after 27 years in power, the shops were empty, the nationalised mining industry was ruined and state spies were everywhere.

‘A good man’

A charismatic trade unionist called Frederick Chiluba was agitating for democracy and capitalism. The voters could not wait to dump Kaunda, among them presumably many of these businessmen now gazing at him adoringly.

It is hard to find anyone with an acrimonious word for Kenneth Kaunda, even Taki, a naturalised Zambian and property magnate, who I met propping up his own bar.

He recounted how the first president had confiscated his businesses without compensation.

“How do you feel about him?” I enquired. “Ah he’s a good man,” he said, draining his glass.

President Chiluba recently provided another opportunity for Zambians to display their capacity for forgiveness.

Frederick Chiluba had a reputation for buying designer clothes and shoes

In 10 years in power, his grand promises delivered wealth only to a select few.

The London High Court ruled that he and his associates had stolen more than $40m (£27m) of public money, but he was acquitted of corruption at Lusaka’s magistrates court.

Ahead of the verdict, one of Zambia’s foremost anti-corruption campaigners told me he wanted a conviction. But then the current president should immediately issue a pardon, he said.

“It would send a message that we are a very forgiving people,” he argued.

Now back in the UK, I am re-adjusting to life in a country where small slights are not so easily overlooked.

Next time someone rubs me up the wrong way, I am going to try to be a little more Zambian about it.

Smile, shake hands and act like it never happened. After all, as the Zambian proverb has it: Two thighs will always rub together.

Reference Link
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/8718808.stm

Courtesy
BBC News

Still Dancing, Her Way, From the Soul

Alicia Alonso, the longtime director of the National Ballet of Cuba, no longer dances with her feet, which, on Monday afternoon at a hotel near Lincoln Center, were daintily crossed at the ankle in a pair of ladylike slingbacks. She is also virtually blind. But when she talks about ballet, her hands, coppery and weathered, flutter near her face as slender fingers, flashing rings and pale pink nails spin and leap through delicate choreographic feats.

“We were creating the future of the ballet in the United States,” Alicia Alonso said about the early days of American Ballet Theater. “It was such a dream.”

Alicia Alonso, with American Ballet Theater in 1955. She gave her final performance in 1995, when she was 75.

“I dance with the hands,” she agreed, quietly smiling. “I do. I dance with my heart actually more. So it comes through my body. I can’t help it.”

On Thursday night Ms. Alonso will celebrate her 90th birthday in a special program performed by American Ballet Theater, for which she was an instrumental dancer in its early days. (She was quick to point out, though, that she is still 89; her actual birthday is not until Dec. 21.) The evening will feature a film retrospective of Ms. Alonso’s career as well as a performance of “Don Quixote” with three principal casts.

Ms. Alonso is at once reviled and adored. Some see her as a political tool of Fidel Castro as well as someone who has remained too long in her job and who prevents certain dancers from working abroad. In 2005 Rolando Sarabia, then one of the Cuban company’s leading dancers, defected, followed later that year by Octavio Martín, a principal dancer, and his wife, Yahima Franco, also a company member. Mr. Sarabia and Mr. Martín said separately at the time that Ms. Alonso had turned down their requests to dance abroad as other Cubans did, notably Carlos Acosta.

But Ms. Alonso is also adored by balletomanes who cherish memories of her Giselle and her longevity onstage. She gave her final performance in 1995 when she danced “The Butterfly,” a piece she choreographed. She was 75.

“A young lady,” she said before surrendering to girlish giggles. “That’s fantastic, no? Two years before, I danced ‘Giselle.’ ”

Ms. Alonso is either a sly fox of the highest degree or an endearing old lady who wears a scarf — ears covered — with the élan of Little Edie in “Grey Gardens.” In all likelihood she’s both; her demeanor can turn on a dime. She firmly refused to answer any questions related to politics.

“I came here because they are giving me a wonderful reception, a wonderful feeling of coming back,” Ms. Alonso said. “I will talk to you about memories and things like that, and I think we should keep it like that. Don’t you think so?”

Well, not really. But it doesn’t work to force Ms. Alonso to do anything she doesn’t want to do. “I mean there’s nothing I can talk about,” she said. “I’m still a Cuban, I have a ballet company that represents my country, and I’m proud of it. Very.”

Ms. Alonso’s return to Ballet Theater evokes emotions that she said were difficult to put into words. “It reminds me of all the years of my working here, my friends, the times we toured during the war and of performing. It’s a whole life. We were creating the future of the ballet in the United States. It was such a dream.”

Ms. Alonso joined Ballet Theater in 1940, but an eye operation sent her back to Cuba, and she rejoined the company in 1943. She was in the original casts of Antony Tudor’s “Undertow” (1945), Agnes de Mille’s “Fall River Legend” (1948) and George Balanchine’s “Theme and Variations” (1947).

For that devilishly difficult ballet, in which she was partnered by Igor Youskevitch, Balanchine took advantage of Ms. Alonso’s technical prowess, challenging her every move. “I remember Mr. B., he looked at me,” she began, before imitating his famous sniff, “and said, ‘Can you do this step?’ I say, ‘I try, Mr. Balanchine.’ Boom.” Then he asked her to try an entrechat six, a leap straight in the air with rapid leg crossings. “ ‘Are you scared?’ ” Ms. Alonso sniffed again. “ ‘No, no. I try, Mr. Balanchine.’ ”

Ms. Alonso’s favorite part of the story occurred after Balanchine heard Youskevitch talking about how easy his variation was and decided to complicate matters. “He almost killed him. After he finished the variation, Mr. Balanchine said, ‘Do you like it?’ and Igor said, ‘No. I’m dead.’ ”

Throughout the years, as her eyesight worsened, Ms. Alonso continued to dance. While others ran offstage quickly, Ms. Alonso, so as not to crash into the scenery, opted for a slower exit. “They put very strong lights so I could see where is center,” she said. She recalled her partner Anton Dolin telling her: “My baby, it’s O.K. It looks very well. You just go and float away.”

But as helpless as some might imagine her to be, Ms. Alonso is quite sharp with what seems to be a selective understanding of English depending on the question. It took three attempts, for instance, to find out whether she was grooming a successor for her company. After sensing that the line “I don’t understand” wasn’t going to get her off the hook, she finally blurted: “No. I think they’re good all by themselves. They are very capable people, I’m sure. I hope.” (Merrily, she crossed her fingers.)

As for her legacy, she said: “I don’t want to be remembered. I just don’t want to be forgotten.”

Ms. Alonso’s mantra clearly has much to do with being young at heart. If she should ever step down as director of the Cuban company, she might find work as a life coach.

“If a person keeps thinking, ‘How old am I going to be?’ and thinking about the age” — she raised her voice — “that’s the worst thing you can do. You don’t have to think about how old you are. You have to think about how many things you want to do and how to do it and keep on doing it.”

She clapped her hands and added: “Otherwise, you know what I think? I am going to live to be 200 years old. So I hope all of you do have the same fortune. I would hate to be alone.”

Reference Link
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/03/arts/dance/03alonso.html

Courtesy
The New York Times Company

Terrariums Make a Comeback

A magnifying glass helps Michelle Inciarrano work in a tiny terrarium

IT was an unseasonably hot Saturday in April, and the three dozen terrariums on display in a booth at the Brooklyn Flea were sweating, the moisture turning into beads on their glass containers. Katy Maslow and Michelle Inciarrano, who were selling the miniature gardens, answered questions from passers-by. An antique magnifying glass sat nearby, for those who wanted a closer look.

Katie Goldman Macdonald makes terrariums in her studio apartment in San Francisco.

Some of their creations have an irreverent sense of humor: small verdant worlds that feature scenes like muggings, complete with tiny shadowy scoundrels. Others are simpler, more elegant arrangements of stones and mosses.

The two friends, who spend most of their weekends “antiquing and junking,” Ms. Maslow said, use repurposed vessels like old apothecary jars, cake stands and decanters to make the terrariums, which seemed at home among the vintage furniture and clothing and artisanal food at the market in Fort Greene.

Ms. Inciarrano, a 33-year-old photography student, was the one with the green thumb, who suggested they fill their finds with plants and figurines, said Ms. Maslow, 31: “I had not thought of terrariums once in my whole life.”

But in less than a year the pair had created so many, each working in her Brooklyn home — Ms. Inciarrano, in the Marine Park apartment she shares with her husband, and Ms. Maslow, in the bright, modern two-bedroom she owns with her siblings in Midwood — that they decided to sell them, calling the enterprise Twig Terrariums.

“The fine-art side of us is totally satisfied by this, and the craft side too,” said Ms. Maslow, who holds a bachelor’s degree in creative writing and maintains a Web site for a family business in the entertainment industry. “I like designing little worlds.”

Long a fixture of elementary school classrooms, terrariums have recently begun gaining favor with young design enthusiasts and creative types. But today’s look nothing like the fish-tank structures and kitschy miniature greenhouses that were popular in the ’70s.

These terrariums marry the current rage for Victoriana with the growing interest in handmade crafts and all things do-it-yourself. Add to that a touch of locavore fervor, as more urbanites take to terraces and fire escapes to grow flowers and herbs in pots.

Grace Bonney, the founder and editor of the blog Design Sponge, said that she gets inquiries about terrariums — how to build them, where to buy them, which plants work best — every day. In her own home, she has three. “Terrariums are coming on the tail end of the cabinet-of-curiosities trend we’ve been seeing for the past few years,” Ms. Bonney said. “But they also touch on a few other movements: budget-friendly décor and gardening. I’ve seen more and more of my readers becoming interested in gardening, but they want to start off slowly.”

Part of the appeal of building a basic terrarium is that it does not require a great deal of gardening know-how. While regular house plants can demand considerable attention, terrariums offer a bit of nature — and the sense of calm it can confer — in a contained, easy-to-care-for way. And once a closed terrarium reaches a state of equilibrium, in which there is neither too much moisture in the container nor too little, it can more or less sustain itself.

“Having these in my home has changed the way I feel about my home,” Ms. Inciarrano said. “It feels more peaceful and in order.”

Like Ms. Maslow and Ms. Inciarrano, Tanesha Smith-Wattley, 31, sells terrariums at the Brooklyn Flea, though she skips figurines in favor of found objects — a sake cup, say, or a piece of driftwood.

Ms. Smith-Wattley, a fashion stylist for the Web site Bluefly, said she came up with the idea of making terrariums when she was searching for centerpieces for her wedding, held last September. She had never done anything like it before, but “right or wrong, I thought, I can make these,” she said, relying on her design skills.

The leftover materials from the wedding became the terrariums she sold at the Flea, under the name Small World Terrariums. She now makes them for events, too, and sells them through a store called Task in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, creating compositions in containers she buys from suppliers in the flower district, Target and T. J. Maxx.

Still, Ms. Smith-Wattley describes herself as “just a girl sitting in my living room” making terrariums.

Long a fixture of elementary school classrooms, terrariums have recently begun gaining favor with young design enthusiasts and creative types, marrying the current rage for Victoriana with the growing interest in handmade crafts and all things do-it-yourself. At left, a terrarium meant to evoke a city park, made by Michelle Inciarrano of Twig Terrariums in Brooklyn.

The artist Paula Hayes, on the other hand, could be considered the high priestess of terrariums, having elevated them to objects of art with her exquisitely cultivated creations in custom-made, hand-blown glass vessels.

At Sprout Home in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, Tassy Zimmerman, one of the store’s owners, sells terrariums with whimsical elements.

A hanging terrarium at Sprout Home.

Describing them as “primordial,” she theorized that terrariums appeal to the human desire to nurture living things. “It’s this beautiful little world you can care for in your apartment, because you probably can’t go buy a piece of land,” said Ms. Hayes, who lives in Brooklyn.

THE precursor to the terrarium, the Wardian Case, was devised in 1829 by Nathaniel Ward, a physician by trade and an enthusiastic botanist, who noticed that a fern he was growing in a jar was flourishing, sealed off from the polluted London air. So innovative was his discovery — and so useful in the age of sea travel, for it allowed for Europeans to bring tropical plants home with them on voyages in which fresh water was scarce — that it was displayed at the Great Exhibition in London in 1851, holding a fern that had not been watered in 18 years.

Nowhere is it more apparent that Dr. Ward’s scientific instrument has become something primarily aesthetic — and a fixture on the design scene — than at the downtown creative studio and storefront Partners & Spade. The terrarium on display there, a collaboration between the landscape designer Lindsey Taylor and the Brooklyn firm Atlas Industries, is a large glass cube on a metal stand, a prehistoric landscape contained in the most modern of forms that sells for $9,500.

Anthony Sperduti, a partner in the business, said: “People are blown away by it. One said they wished they could live inside it, it was so bucolic.”

Those who can’t afford such high-end design — or would rather make it themselves — can often be found at Sprout Home, a serene garden store in Williamsburg, an offshoot of a Chicago store.

On a recent afternoon, a long-limbed young woman clad in leggings and a cardigan with the look, if not the provenance, of a vintage-store find, approached the counter carrying a cloche. The glass was smudged with thumbprints, suggesting that the jar had been handled by an untold number of admirers at a flea market before she bought it. She asked for help creating a terrarium, telling the woman behind the register, “I’ve never made one before, but I looked it up on the Internet and was totally obsessed.”

Tassy Zimmerman, one of the store’s owners, said that several such customers come in every day asking about them. “There is definitely a huge craze,” she said.

A YouTube video of Ms. Zimmerman demonstrating how to make a terrarium has been viewed almost 24,000 times since it was posted on Design Sponge; by comparison, Ms. Bonney said, the average video on the site that is not part of an ongoing series garners about 10,000 views.

In addition to offering classes and premade terrariums priced between $50 and $250, Sprout sells the materials for constructing one — which come with a step-by-step instruction sheet (also available on the store’s Web site) — and accessories like miniature feathered birds and crystals.

Ms. Zimmerman said she had a handful of customers who had been inspired to hold terrarium-making parties after watching the video on Design Sponge, buying soil, charcoal and rocks in bulk.

Flora Grubb, a landscape designer who owns the 28,000-square-foot nursery Flora Grubb Gardens in San Francisco, said her average terrarium customer is a little younger than her typical client, and is not generally an avid gardener.

“It’s a design-y set,” Ms. Grubb said. “They are interested in plants from a design standpoint, not a horticultural standpoint.”

Many are drawn in by the creative aspect — deciding whether to make a tropical terrarium, for example, or one of “the really artistic terrariums,” she said, which “take an artistic hand to make.”

In the last year, she said, the best-selling item in her online store has been a kit for building a terrarium in a small glass bubble. “We sold a gazillion of them,” she said.

Katy Maslow, left, and Ms. Inciarrano have created many of their terrariums in glass containers they found at flea markets and antique fairs. Within a year, the friends had amassed so many that they decided to sell them under the name Twig Terrariums at the Brooklyn Flea market in Fort Greene.

One of Ms. Grubb’s customers, Katie Goldman Macdonald, 26, is a women’s apparel designer for Old Navy with a special fondness for succulents. Ms. Macdonald grew up around plants — her father has a master’s degree in botany — and has made around 100 terrariums over the years. She has sold about 40 of them in the past eight months, she said.

Ms. Macdonald has her ovoid glass containers hand-blown in Oakland, Calif., and builds her terrariums in her plant-filled studio apartment in the Mission District. Her sleek creations, filled with the architectural, slightly alien shapes of her succulents, would not be out of place in a room furnished with midcentury modern pieces.

She described making a terrarium as a sort of science experiment, albeit one conducted with color, texture and visual composition in mind.

“They fit with the current infatuation with all things old and scientific,” she said, “and this Victorian idea of science as beauty and something you want to display in your home.”

Ms. Macdonald initially made some terrariums to sell at a craft fair at work, figuring that her colleagues, who are “obsessed with aesthetics,” she said, “would be fascinated with having beautiful arrangements in their home that they can look at and not have to do much to.”

That is one of the main draws of terrariums, she said: they are good for people who love plants but do not actually enjoy gardening.

“There are those people who go to Marin and hike on the weekends, but I think people live in cities because they are city people,” she said.

“I tried to start a garden on a city farm for a while, but I realized that I am not really an outdoorsy nature person,” she added. “Terrariums are a way to be connected to that while staying indoors.”

Making Your Own Ecosystem

Assembling a terrarium requires little more than a glass container, gravel, soil and plants. Noel Rose, the owner of Anchor Aquarium Service in Brooklyn, a company that builds large terrariums and aquariums, provided some basic instructions.

Spread gravel, preferably a natural kind like pea gravel, an inch or two thick in a glass container. Mr. Rose recommends using a 10-gallon fish tank, which is inexpensive and has a large opening that makes it easier to work in, but smaller containers like fishbowls will also work as long as they are transparent. Whatever size you use, it helps if your hand can fit through the opening.

Putting a layer of sphagnum moss or burlap over the gravel is optional, but it will keep the dirt that goes on top from seeping into the gravel. Next, spread about a quarter-inch layer of charcoal over the gravel to absorb odors. Then add at least two inches of potting soil, or more depending on the types and sizes of your plants.

Finally, place your plants inside the terrarium. Smaller containers will hold two or three, and some might hold only one. Mr. Rose suggests using very small, relatively hardy plants that do well in medium-moisture environments, like pathos, ferns, moss, ivy and bromeliads.

Water or mist the terrarium sparingly, but keep it moist. If you’re using a container with a cover, monitor the terrarium for a month or two to make sure it does not get too moist (condensation will form on the glass, and mold and fungus might appear on the plants and in the soil). Adjust the lid, or remove it, to temper the amount of moisture; eventually it should stabilize, and the terrarium won’t need as much care. Terrariums without lids require more water and care, as moisture is lost to evaporation.

Either way, “It’s an ongoing experiment,” Mr. Rose said. “You’re trying to create a microclimate — that’s what separates a terrarium from a flowerpot.”

Reference Link
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/03/garden/03terrarium.html?pagewanted=1

Courtesy
The New York Times Company