Sci/tech tidbits in and around New Hampshire
Can old wood-burning electricity plants make money?
The Valley News reports that a Maine firm called Stored Solar has bought wood-burning power plants in New Hampshire that have shut down because their electricity is too expensive to compete in the deregulated market. The whole story is here. It's a good story that...
Did ocean noise levels change during the pandemic?
From UNH News Service: An international development team, led by researchers at the University of New Hampshire, has created a software program that can process sound data collected from the world’s oceans in a more standardized format that will enhance research and...
After a wind storm, forest ‘tip-ups’ can spur diversity
When big trees fall over in a storm, their upended root masses can the raised six, ten or more feet in the air. They slowly rot over many years forming what's called a tip-up or, after many decades, a pillow. (Alongside the pillow will be a depression where the roots...
Ice-out is getting earlier, but it’s an imprecise measure
One New Hampshire spring tradition is declaration of "ice out" on lakes, of which the most famous is on Lake Winnipesaukee, the state's biggest body of fresh water. This year it was declared on April 5, which is pretty early. The announcement led a reader to ask me:...
You are my sunshine, excessive sunshine …
A lot of meteorological records that are kept - wind, precipitation, snowfall, temperature - but I didn't realize that sunshine was one of them. Silly me! The Blue Hill Observatory in Massachusetts says that March tied for the sunniest on record with 1915: 243 hours...
Keene’s COVID sewage-testing is now spotting variants
Keene was among the first - maybe the first - New Hampshire city to start testing of sewage for SARS-CoV2 viruses (here's my story from last August). Now they're testing for two variants, as well, as the Keene Sentinel reports. I suspect this will become routine...
Tired: Whale watching. Wired: Offshore wind-farm watching
As a rule I don't pay much attention to surveys of people's attitudes about things that don't exist yet, because their vague assumptions about what's involved (based on the usually vague wording in the survey) have nothing to do with reality. But let's make an...
For small business, cyber-security is as important as it is intimidating
One of the difficulties in getting people like you – and I suppose me, too – to be on guard against bad guys online, is that we are not quite as clever as we think. “In graduate school, I worked in a computer lab managing systems, and what fascinated me is how people...
Randomness more than environmental selection is key to bacteria change in Arctic
From UNH News Service. Climatic outcomes at lower latitudes could be, in part, affected by changes to microbial communities in the Arctic, where the thawing of permafrost changes how microbes contribute to global greenhouse gas production. To further...
2020 was state’s deadliest year in recent history
NHPR crunched the numbers and found that more New Hampshire residents died in 2020 than any year on record, thanks to COVID-19. The story is here. An interesting tidbit is that not only did more people die, more died at home: "Medical providers cautioned early in the...
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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 WKXL radio in Concord.
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.