In Cuba, those old American cars share the road with Chinese electric motorcycles
I recently got back from a 10-day trip in Cuba, a place I'd never been. (It's quite easy to visit for Americans, I was surprised to find.) The most interesting geek angle came in transportation - not from the thousands of preserved-through-necessity old American cars...
read moreDartmouth group offers fix for that scary computer chip security flaw
By Joseph Blumberg, Dartmouth News: Dartmouth computer science graduate students are applying their research techniques to fundamental security flaws recently found in nearly every computer chip manufactured in the last 20 years. Until new designs are implemented, an...
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Should we save this gorgeous ash tree? It’s not an easy decision
This is the story of a massive, gorgeous tree that will die before long, the fact that we could save it but probably won’t, and the way that thousands of people, perhaps including you, are facing this same choice. “It’s a hard decision,” is how Ethan Belair, the UNH...
read moreNew Hampshire is finally getting a festival to celebrate bats (as in mammals, not baseball)
There's a festival for everything else in the world, so why not the coolest of all mammals: bats? Why not, indeed. The first New Hampshire Bat Festival will be held this Saturday, October 20, at Franklin Pierce University in Rindge. The one-day festival will have...
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Updating the shallow ‘dug’ well for the modern world
Few things say “old-time New England” more than getting your water from a dug well, a 20-foot hole in the ground covered with a concrete top that pipes water into your house. But what if there was a whole type of dug well, one so new that its design has been patented?...
read moreDrone-pilot training starts at Concord airport
Drones have begun flying at Concord Airport as operations get off the ground at the state’s first training facility for unmanned aircraft. The training facility from ArgenTech Solutions of Newmarket opened earlier this month after receiving an airspace waiver that...
read moreThe best fans are fair-weather fans, and science shows why
Are you excited about the Boston Red Sox and all the baseball-y stuff they do really well? I sure am! There’s that guy who hits it a lot, he’s great, and those guys who throw it wicked fast, I love ‘em. And what about those people who run around and catch the ball?...
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Flu vaccinations among children declined last year
About two-thirds of children under 18 in New Hampshire were vaccinated against the flu last year, one of the highest rates in the country, but overall the nation seems to be backsliding on having children and teens get their flu shot. The Centers for Disease Control...
read moreDoes that vest have a 600 nanometer dominant wavelength? Must be deer season!
Hunting seasons are upon us, and New Hampshire Fish and Game is reminding hunters (and other people going into the woods) that it’s a good idea to wear blaze orange, sometimes called Hunter Orange. Humans can spot this almost-neon color a mile away but it is not...
read moreMass. coal plant replaced by solar and storage, sort of
The Mount Tom Power Station, a coal-fired plant in Holyoke, Mass,. shut two years ago, and now it's the site of a solar power plus storage facility. Big win, right? Well, kind of. Mount Tom had a maximum output of 163 MW and the solar plant is just 3 MW, and 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 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.