Sci/tech tidbits in and around New Hampshire
A last gasp from Biden: $15 million for EV chargers in NH (which needs all the help it can get)
New Hampshire has received a $15 million federal grant to build more public charging locations of electric vehicles. The money is earmarked to build 199 charging ports – the EV equivalent of a pump at a gas station – in “both urban and rural areas.” That would...
Vt. electric-plane-charging system is expanding
Beta Technologies of Burlington, Vermont, is trying to develop an electric-aviation ecosystem with both small planes and, importantly, charging infrastructure. It installed a charging station at Manchester airport last year (article here) and now says it has them at...
What’s the dollar value of a forest that you can’t cut down?
What is a living forest worth in money? That’s a simple-sounding question which has flummoxed New Hampshire for a long time. We know what forests are worth when they are no longer alive, after they’re cut down and sold, but putting a dollar figure on keeping them...
An NH bill pretends climate change doesn’t exist because it’s too scary to face
Any parent knows how exhausting it is to have to cajole and drag along a toddler who doesn't want to do something which is good for them. They whine and throw tantrums and spout nonsense and you have to cope with it all instead of doing something useful. That's how I...
Science Cafe NH: “Science of Genealogy”
"The Science Behind Genealogy" will be the topic for this month's Science Cafe NH in Nashua on Tuesday, January 21, at 6:00 PM at Soel Sistas, 30 Temple Street. This free public event will feature a panel of experts discussing the latest advancements in genetic...
Inventor of social-media hashtag is a NH boy
The Union-Leader's Dave Pierce has a profile of a local boy (Manchester West grad who grew up Bedford) who developed the hashtag for social-media sites in 2007. The article is here. As an early technology user, Messina first tweeted the idea to his followers and then...
2024 was hottest year on record for Concord – a record that, unfortunately, won’t last
According to the National Weather Service in Gray, Maine, last year was the warmest year in Concord since record-keeping began in 1868. The year finished with an average temperature of 49.6 degrees, 0.2 degrees higher than 2023, the previous hottest year on record....
Can the Cog Railway be electrified?
The Caledonian-Record has a story about UNH and the Cog Railway on Mt. Washington working to electrify the iconic mountain-climbing train. "This privately funded quarter-million dollar project aims to have a prototype ready by 2025" and will have "modular components...
Science on Tap: ‘Extinction Here & There’
The SEE Science Center’s twelfth season of Science on Tap discussions continues Tuesday, Jan. 14. Science on Tap events are informal discussions with local scientists and experts on a particular topic. On Tuesday January 14th the topic will be: Extinction Here...
You can get a local-news-ish product built entirely by A.I. … should I be worried?
I promise that this column was written by me and not by artificial intelligence. The fact that I have to write such a sentence says volumes about where we are at the moment. Here’s another one of those volumes: You can get a weekly email summarizing what happened at...
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