Sci/tech tidbits in and around New Hampshire
Fiber-to-the-home is making it to more of New Hampshire (UPDATED)
Bristol, a 3,000-person town halfway between the Lakes Region and Hanover, is connecting many of its homes to a fiber network, using money from the pandemic's CARES Act - the Union-Leader has a story here. I wrote about its early stirrings in 2018. I've been writing...
Wikipedia turns 20 (citation needed)
This post ran in 2016 when Wikipedia turned 15. Now that Wikipedia has turned 20, I figured I would run it again. This column concerns a number – 15, the number of years that Wikipedia will have existed when its birthday arrives Friday – but first let’s consider a...
Speaking of Wikipedia, I once hunted down the creator of the article for Concord
If you’re a wikipedia geek, you’ll know who I found: Rambot.
UPDATED UPDATE: At current rate, it will take 1.8 years to vaccinate N.H.
Sorry for the confusion but I have now undone an overly hasty correction. I "corrected" myself before double-checking, which was stupid. My original posting was correct - we are getting 18,000 DOSES of vaccine a week, not 18,000 vials of vaccine containing 5 or 10...
New Hampshire patents through Jan. 17
By Targeted News Service The following patents were assigned in New Hampshire from Jan. 10 to Jan. 17. *** Parallel Wireless Assigned Patent for Congestion, Overload Reduction Parallel Wireless, Nashua, New Hampshire, has been assigned a patent (No. 10,893,436,...
Maine highway bridge has girders made of composites and engineers are intrigued
A replacement highway bridge in Hampden, a town next to Bangor, Maine, has girders made partly of composite materials and there's real hope this could cut down on maintenance problems, especially rust caused by road salt. The Bangor Daily News has a story - read it...
An invasive tree might help reduce impact of an invasive bug
UPDATE: See note at bottom. Invasive species are non-native plants, bugs and beasts that for various reasons, usually lack of predators, spread so quickly after being introduced that they overwhelm native species. They're a huge problem all over the world because they...
Union says Schiller coal-fired power plant is shut for good
The IBEW union in Maine says that Schiller Station in Portsmouth, with two 50 MW coal-fired and one 50 MW wood-fired power plants, has effectively shut down permanently, although the owners haven't announced anything. They said this last July - I'm embarrassed that I...
NH food-composting epicenter expands its reach and you can thank a soil shortage
There are lots of good reasons to compost your food waste, but here’s one I hadn’t thought of: a dearth of dirt. “Topsoil is getting harder and harder to find,” said Marc Morgan, solid waste manager for the city of Lebanon, who needs topsoil to cover the city landfill...
Dartmouth researchers develop a glue that sometimes isn’t gluey (which is good)
One of the most intriguingly successful inventions of my life has been Post-It Notes. The idea that glue which doesn't work very well could create an important product was counter-intuitive and bravo to the folks at 3M who pursued it. So it's interesting to hear of...
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