Sci/tech tidbits in and around New Hampshire
We don’t need no stinkin’ area code! Oh, wait, yes we do
In one month - October 24 - dialing the 603 area code will become necessary to make local calls to some new Hampshire numbers. By next June, it will be required for all numbers. Phone companies are starting to alert people about it, noting that things like "life...
N.H. patents through Sept. 19
By Targeted News Service The following patents were assigned in New Hampshire from Sept. 12 to Sept. 19. *** Parallel Wireless Assigned Patent for Elastic Local, Global Scheduling for Cellular Infrastructure Parallel Wireless, Nashua, New Hampshire, has been assigned...
Indoor farming for salad greens keeps getting bigger in NH
The region’s biggest greenhouse grower of salad greens, Lef Farms of Loudon, has been purchased by a national firm which plans to enlarge it. New York-based Brightfarms purchased Lef (pronounced “leaf”) this summer for an undisclosed amount. The company says it plans...
Wikipedia article on Benford’s Law drew a lot of attention during Calif. recall
I have written several times over the years about the fascinating pattern known as Benford's Law, which describes the weird pattern in the distribution of the first digit of numbers found in certain large datasets. It was famously noticed because the pages of books...
Can the abrupt end of the last ice age tell us anything about what our climate is going to do?
The Mount Washington Observatory has a Science Cafe-like series called Science in the Mountains which has, like SCNH, gone online during the pandemic. The next one seems particularly interesting: "Charting the Last Great Global Warming: Ice Age Lessons for a Warming...
Hey, it’s (yet another) disastrous invasive insect heading our way!
You will be glad to hear that I have figured out a sure-fire retirement scheme once I’m no longer getting the huge paychecks handed out to newspaper reporters: Breeding praying mantises! No, wait, hear me out. Aside from being the coolest insect (dragonfly aficionados...
NH will never be truly geeky without more Ig Nobel winners (redux)
The 2021 Ig Nobel Prizes have been awarded and, once again, nobody from New Hampshire got the most coveted prize in academia. GraniteGeek has long been a big Ig Nobel fan. I have attended more than a dozen of the goofy events at Ha-vahhd, and I brought the founder and...
Dartmouth is ever-hopeful about cellulosic biofuels
The U.S. Department of Energy has given a $1.2 million, three-year grant to Dartmouth engineering professor Daniel Olson, who is investigating the use of biomass to produce next-generation fuels and chemicals. The goal is to use C. thermocellum, a type of bacteria...
N.H. patents through Sept. 12
By Targeted News Service The following patents were assigned in New Hampshire from Sept. 6 to Sept. 12. *** Deka Products Assigned Patent for System for Remote Patient Care Deka Products, Manchester, New Hampshire, has been assigned a patent (No. 11,109,934, initially...
Typos weren’t a tipoff in that Peterborough email scam
One of the interesting human-factor issues in email spam is typos and grammar errors. As you may now, they are often badly written/typed on purpose as a gullibility filter: People who aren't turned off by the obvious mistakes are more likely to fall for the follow-up...
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Science Cafe NHAbout Granite Geek
Dave Brooks has written a science/tech column since 1991 – yes, that long – and has written this blog since 2006, keeping an eye on topics of geekish interest in and around New Hampshire, from software to sea level rise, population dynamics to printing (3-D, of course). He moderates monthly Science Cafe NH discussions, beer in hand, and discusses the geek world regularly on WGIR-AM radio..
Brooks earned a bachelor’s degree in mathematics but got lost on the way to the Ivory Tower and ended up in a newsroom. He has reported for newspapers from Tennessee to New England. Rummage through his bag of awards you’ll find oddities like three Best Blog prizes from the New Hampshire Press Association and a Writer of the Year award from the N.H. Farm and Forest Bureau, of all places. He joined the Concord Monitor in 2015.