Vermont’s utility wants to go all carbon-free and renewable, and pretty soon
Green Mountain Power, the utility that covers most of Vermont, has joined the ranks of utilities like Xcel Energy that are working toward 100 percent carbon-free electricity. It said it will target 100 percent carbon-free by 2025 and 100 percent renewables by 2030. To...
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Sometimes lightning *prefers* to strike twice in the same place
(Yes, this is another post about UNH research involving lightning. But it's different research!) Joe Dwyer, a physics professor at the University of New Hampshire’s Space Science Center who is known for his lightning research, helped to interpret data in a new study...
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Can a non-meat burger fool me?
(In the original version of the story I called the restaurant 603Grill instead of Grill603 ... ) In the name of saving the planet, I ate two burgers on Saturday. No sacrifice is too great for journalism. One burger was, well, a burger: Angus beef with 20% fat content...
read moreOur population is stagnant, so how come the housing market is tight?
One of the great advantages of my job is that I sometimes get paid to answer questions which bug me. This article, which ran in Sunday's Concord Monitor, is an example: The arrival of springtime means the start of the busy season for housing sales, but to some extent,...
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People are smarter about culverts than I thought
Last week I wrote a story about a culvert that collapsed in the city of Concord. As part of discussion with General Services, the generically-named city body that includes the street department, I asked a question: How many culverts does Concord have? A confession: I...
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Mowing less to help bees doesn’t necessarily also help ticks
As I have noted before, research indicates that mowing your yard every other week instead of every week can help native pollinators and bees. But I also noted that this goes against advice to reduce tick populations in your yard, because ticks like longer grass...
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New Hampshire patents
The Concord Monitor runs a list of patents that have been issued recently to companies or individuals in New Hampshire. Check it out.
read moreTiny house take a tiny – really tiny – step forward in N.H.
Fans of tiny houses will have to wait longer to see if New Hampshire lawmakers will embrace them, as a bill to ease approval of the structures is going to a study committee. The state Senate Election Law and Municipal Affairs Committee on Wednesday approved a bill...
read moreSmall N.H. town & phone company building fiber-to-the-home for everybody
(Note to print readers of the Monitor: Yes, the story in print said "1200 band modem" - I'll have to blame that one on an editor who's probably too young to remember when modem speeds were a topic of conversation.)(I can't be too critical; when I posted this piece...
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I’ll see your Zeus and raise you a ‘fast negative breakdown’
(I seem to be a branch office of the UNH pressroom this week, but so be it: they've generated some interesting stuff.) From UNH News Service: In a first-of-its-kind observation, researchers from the University of New Hampshire Space Science Center have documented a...
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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 New Hampshire Public 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.