Sci/tech tidbits in and around New Hampshire
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: Fusion power is coming!
The Boston Globe has an update on Commonwealth Fusion Systems, an MIT spinoff that is working on a fusion reactor. It's going to build a manufacturing facility in Devens, Mass. and says it has "developed highly sophisticated electromagnets that can confine the plasma...

It’s windier than normal … or is it? (redux)
It's very windy today in New Hampshire - lots of power lines down but not the ones to my house, thankfully. I've posted a couple items about wind speeds at Concord Municipal Airport, the National Weather Service's official measuring spot, in response to reader...
Building a better ‘canary trap’
Most of us have heard of computer network "honey traps" to lure in bad guys, but "canary traps" are new to me: "The canary trap technique in espionage spreads multiple versions of false documents to conceal a secret." At Dartmouth, cybersecurity folks are using AI to...
N.H. patents through Feb. 28
By Targeted News Service The following patents were assigned in New Hampshire from Feb. 21 to Feb. 28. *** Parallel Wireless Assigned Patent for CDMA/EVDO Virtualization Parallel Wireless, Nashua, New Hampshire, has been assigned a patent (No. 10,932,164, initially...
Grow kelp and sink it. Can that help the climate?
"Maine Startup Aims To Pull Carbon Out Of The Atmosphere By Growing — And Then Sinking — Kelp Farms" I think that headline says it all - lots of details in the story from WBUR right here, notably the fact that the idea is to grow kelp on buoys out in the deep ocean;...

Mars rover will be looking at the product of a tiny N.H. company pretty much every day
here’s a high-tech bit of New Hampshire on the Perseverance rover that NASA just landed on Mars, but to be perfectly honest, it doesn’t look very high-techish. “You see that disk? We made all the white stuff,” said Art Springsteen, who with his wife, Kathryn, is...
It’s a barn-raising but with solar panels
New Hampshire has long been a laggard when it comes to solar power. Maybe we need some banjos. “We’ve had fiddlers and guitar players at one of the raisers,” said Chris Kolb, president of a volunteer group called HAREI that installed 15 rooftop solar arrays atop homes...
A ‘vertiport’ not a heliport for Manchester
New Hampshire is falling farther behind on electric vehicles and can't do anything new with passenger trains and has a so-so-at-best intercity bus system - but hey, let's talk about cargo-carrying VTOL drones, autonomous to some extent. (Definitely not helicopters)....

N.H. coal-fired power plant wins another year of support
The coal-fired power plant in Bow has won another year’s funding from a program designed to guarantee future electricity supplies. The two units at Merrimack Station, soon to be the last coal-fired plant in New England, will be paid about $1.08 million per month from...
A little non-maple syrup on your waffles?
The Union-Leader has a good story about UNH research project to study syrup from tree species other than maple. You can read it here. Apparently this has been a thing for a while, although it's new to me: "Our biggest customers are people that are really intrigued by...