Sci/tech tidbits in and around New Hampshire
Building a better ‘canary trap’
Most of us have heard of computer network "honey traps" to lure in bad guys, but "canary traps" are new to me: "The canary trap technique in espionage spreads multiple versions of false documents to conceal a secret." At Dartmouth, cybersecurity folks are using AI to...
Grow kelp and sink it. Can that help the climate?
"Maine Startup Aims To Pull Carbon Out Of The Atmosphere By Growing — And Then Sinking — Kelp Farms" I think that headline says it all - lots of details in the story from WBUR right here, notably the fact that the idea is to grow kelp on buoys out in the deep ocean;...
Mars rover will be looking at the product of a tiny N.H. company pretty much every day
here’s a high-tech bit of New Hampshire on the Perseverance rover that NASA just landed on Mars, but to be perfectly honest, it doesn’t look very high-techish. “You see that disk? We made all the white stuff,” said Art Springsteen, who with his wife, Kathryn, is...
It’s a barn-raising but with solar panels
New Hampshire has long been a laggard when it comes to solar power. Maybe we need some banjos. “We’ve had fiddlers and guitar players at one of the raisers,” said Chris Kolb, president of a volunteer group called HAREI that installed 15 rooftop solar arrays atop homes...
A ‘vertiport’ not a heliport for Manchester
New Hampshire is falling farther behind on electric vehicles and can't do anything new with passenger trains and has a so-so-at-best intercity bus system - but hey, let's talk about cargo-carrying VTOL drones, autonomous to some extent. (Definitely not helicopters)....
N.H. coal-fired power plant wins another year of support
The coal-fired power plant in Bow has won another year’s funding from a program designed to guarantee future electricity supplies. The two units at Merrimack Station, soon to be the last coal-fired plant in New England, will be paid about $1.08 million per month from...
A little non-maple syrup on your waffles?
The Union-Leader has a good story about UNH research project to study syrup from tree species other than maple. You can read it here. Apparently this has been a thing for a while, although it's new to me: "Our biggest customers are people that are really intrigued by...
Tiny houses are back on the N.H. agenda
There's a bill before the legislature, HB 588, that would require towns to allow standalone “tiny houses” anywhere they allow single-family homes or detached accessory dwelling units ("in-law apartments"). Citizens Count, a nonprofit news group, has a story here. The...
N.H. patents through Feb. 28
By Targeted News Service The following patents were assigned in New Hampshire from Feb. 21 to Feb. 28. *** Parallel Wireless Assigned Patent for CDMA/EVDO Virtualization Parallel Wireless, Nashua, New Hampshire, has been assigned a patent (No. 10,932,164, initially...
When it comes to electric vehicle charging, we are “Cow Hampshire”
New Hampshire's attempts to use some of the Volkswagen "dieselgate" money to build electric vehicle charging stations on major highways fizzled last year due to a lack of suitable bids to the state’s request for proposals - we're going to try again this spring. In the...
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