Sci/tech tidbits in and around New Hampshire
COVID realism, not pessimism
As part of never-ending efforts to deal with this pandemic, it may be time to embrace the Stockdale Paradox. This concept, which I just learned about, is named after Jim Stockdale, a rear admiral who was held as a POW in Vietnam for seven years. Stockdale said in...
UNH research: Treating diabetes with snail venom. (Snails have venom?)
By Robbin Ray, UNH News Service: UNH researchers have found a potential treatment for diabetes from an unlikely source - snail venom. With a smooth, mottled shell popular among seashell collectors, the cone snail releases a potent insulin-like venom that can paralyze...
N.H. patents through Nov. 21
By Targeted News Service The following patents were assigned in New Hampshire from Nov. 14 to Nov. 21. *** Parallel Wireless Assigned Patent for Wireless Backhaul Resiliency Parallel Wireless, Nashua, New Hampshire, has been assigned a patent (No. 11,178,558,...
‘Click to subscribe, call to cancel’ may end
An annoying practice of companies that depend on subscriptions - including, I fear, the Concord Monitor - may have to end. That practice involves making it much easier to subscribe than to cancel subscription. At many newspapers like the Monitor, for example, you can...
Lyme vaccine targets the tick, not the pathogen
New England would love a vaccine against Lyme disease. How about a vaccine against all tick-borne diseases - one that targets the tick itself, not the virus or pathogen it accidentally spits into our bloodstream? That's the idea behind an mRNA vaccine under...
All those trail cameras are a wildlife big-data bonanza
Researchers at UNH are "analyzing more 250,000 wildlife images recorded by trail cameras at more than 145 research sites throughout southeastern and central New Hampshire" to improve methods of monitoring wildlife. (Details here.) Unless you're a hunter, you may not...
B Corp status tries to quantify some hard-to-quantify qualities
In 1970, in a series of arguments that have become gospel in the business community, economist Milton Friedman argued that companies should focus on providing profits to their investors to the exclusion of everything else. All good things will follow, he said, as long...
Maybe I wasn’t so wrong about area codes after all
Recently I took myself to task for repeating a story that was too good to check - that the original area codes were assigned by population to minimize time spent on the network dialing. Here's the story, if you missed it. But maybe I wasn't so wrong, after all -...
Miraculous energy machines by local inventors are nothing new
When I wrote about a "revolutionary" energy-making machine being developed in Massachusetts that seems to conveniently sidestep certain laws of physics (here's the story from last week) one reader mused about 1970s memories of a New Hampshire man who developed an...
Debate on passenger rail returns (again) to N.H.
NOTE: This story ran in Monday's Monitor. A reader posted an comment below it online about the legislature's decision a decade-ish ago to reject federal funding to study this idea, saying that the GOP legislators who made the move wanted to widen I-93 instead (of...
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