Sci/tech tidbits in and around New Hampshire
Burning wood for power is a complex topic even for the Space Force
The energy transition has room for plenty of debate about what’s good and what’s bad (nuclear! hydrogen! beaming power from orbit!) but in New Hampshire the poster child for these arguments is biomass. Burning wood for heat and power has been the center of economic,...
Huge lithium supply found in Maine, but there are complications
A massive supply of underground lithium has been found in western Maine, reports The Maine Monitor, but there are complications: The richest known hard rock lithium deposit in the world lies a few miles northeast of the ski slopes of Sunday River ... Yet lithium is a...
UNH is among top 9 colleges nationally for sustainability
This is a press release from UNH, which is understandably proud. I don't know the details of the rating system but I have to assume that ECOLine, the combined-heat-and-power system using landfill gas which powers much of the Durham campus, is a big part of their...
All together now: “4,000 poles in Kancamagus Highway!”
On Oct. 24, the state highway department announced the first snowfall on the Kancamagus Highway, which gives me an excuse to point again to my 2019 story explaining how the state collects roughly 4,000 small trees each year and attaches them to road markers on some...
N.H. patents through Oct. 24
By Targeted News Service The following patents were assigned in New Hampshire from Oct. 17 to Oct. 24. *** Dartmouth College Assigned Patent for Multi-Coil Induction Hob, Method Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, has been assigned a patent (No. 11,153,941,...
Chaos theory tries to make climate change a little less chaotic
Put your hand up, everybody whose college dorm room had a poster of a Mandelbrot set on the wall, preferably in vivid psychedelic colors. And how about those who remember your mind being blown by James Gleick’s book “Chaos”? Lots of you, I see. No surprise among...
Surprisingly, a record warm October may makes leaves appear later in spring
At this time of year we fixate on the effect of weather patterns, especially warmer autumns like the record-breaking October that we're having, on leaf-peeping. Now a fascinating study has looked at the effect of warmer autumns on when leaves appear in the spring....
An informed chat about climate change and precipitation, with only a little bit of lamentation
I moderated my first online Science Cafe NH in a long time last night. The online version of this long-running program has been handled by folks on the team that ran the Nashua portion of the program when we were still in three-dimensional space, and they've got the...
Remember, 603 is no longer optional as of Sunday (boooo!)
Just a reminder that Sunday is the day that we'll have to start dialing "603" in front of most local calls. If you haven't added it to numbers in your Contact list, you'll start getting annoying messages that the call can't go through. I wrote about the change and why...
Even without flood or drought or locust plagues, farming is hard
The abrupt decision by New Hampshire to stop certifying organic livestock farms will not have a big effect on the state’s agriculture, but it shows that maintaining food production is a complicated process. “It is both a funding problem and a labor problem,”...
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