Sci/tech tidbits in and around New Hampshire
Civil Air Patrol cell phone forensics records 1,000th find
Almost two years ago I wrote about how the Civil Air Patrol uses cell phone forensics to find people lost in the wild, a process that is much more complicated than TV shows would make you believe. (You can read that column here) This complexity means that if you make...
Nashua Telegraph goes almost all-digital
The Telegraph of Nashua, which when I worked there was the state's second-biggest daily newspaper by circulation and may still be - who knows what anybody's circulation is these days? - is going all-digital except for the weekend paper. The company announced the...
No, ultraviolet light can’t cure your COVID
Prof. Jim Malley of UNH was featured prominently in my column earlier this month about disinfecting clothing, because he's had decades of experience in the matter. Among other things, we talked about using ultraviolet light inside specialized machines to disinfect...
How do grids know what’s going on with all our rooftop solar?
When my 5 kW rooftop solar system kicks into gear most of what it does is reduce my power usage, although on a day like yesterday - 35 kWh, the equivalent of 7 hours of full production thanks to cool weather and a sunny day! - it sends some electricity into the grid....
More cases from more testing, not necessarily more disease
As many people, including me, have noted, the shortage of COVID-19 testing makes data about its prevalence in the community suspect. A perfect example came up at Thursday's press conference by N.H. officials - here's the item I reported for the Monitor: The number of...
COVID-19 in N.H. more common in women, most minorities, middle-aged
I'm slightly hesitant to read too much into the state's weekly analysis of COVID-19 because testing is still not widespread. There's a real risk of garbage- in-garbage-out because data about who has the disease isn't comprehensive. Keeping that proviso in mind, here's...
Nanotags allow amazing tracking of birds, butterflies and bats
A grant from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) will enable a New England research partnership to expand a new migration tracking system across New England. The three-year, Competitive State Wildlife Grant of $998,000 will be matched by $355,500 in private...
Fly around the world (virtually) in a DC-3
The Aviation Museum of New Hampshire has launched a new distance learning program: a virtual around-the-world flight that can be followed online by everyone as it progresses around the globe. Using the museum's Elite Flight Simulator and Lockheed Martin's Prepare 3D...
For fighting climate change, COVID will make us: (a) stronger, (b) weaker, (c) who the heck knows
This was supposed to have been a very different column. The plan, long in the works, was for us to mark the 50th anniversary of Earth Day on Wednesday with a flurry of activity. Granite Geek would put a New Hampshire spin on Project Breakdown, which calibrates the...
How can we reopen? Here’s how
If you ignore the dunderheads who think everything can go back to normal tomorrow and the paranoids who think this is the unavoidable End of Days, there remains a big question about how exactly life should resume in the COVID-19 era. A whole bunch of intelligent...
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