Sci/tech tidbits in and around New Hampshire
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...
COVID testing: Fast, accurate – choose one
I don't usually point to preprints, or papers released without peer review, but this one on medRxiv, the preprint server for health sciences, is interesting: "For COVID-19-like viral parameters, a test with 40% false negatives and immediate result might reduce...
They’ve begun testing a Lyme vaccine for humans
It's actually not a vaccine but a "pre-exposure prophylaxis" that delivers antibodies to you instead of triggering the immune system to make them, which I think means it would have to be given every year. It was developed in Massachusetts although it's undergoing a...
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