Sci/tech tidbits in and around New Hampshire
UNH gets $6 million contract for space weather instrument
From UNH News Service: The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and NASA have selected the University of New Hampshire Space Science Center to design and build a specialized instrument to improve space weather monitoring and forecasting capabilities. The...
Bottling milk in the time of COVID
Dairy farms are bad from the climate-change point of view, but I've always loved visiting them. (Working at them, with those 6 a.m. milkings, might be another matter.) So I jumped at the chance to write about Contoocook Creamery, which unusually for small New...
NH 5-day COVID average is highest it has ever been
No peak yet, alas. Glass half full: Growth is linear, not exponential. (Testing is so limited that it's hard to know what to make of that, however.)
COVID cases are edging up, says 5-day average
I'm not a stats guy so I can't vouch for the superiority of the method, but today I took my chart listing the daily count of newly confirmed COVID cases in New Hampshire and added a 5-day moving average line. Each point on the red line line of the chart above is the...
Wooly adelgid-resistant hemlock coming
Here's a bit of good news: The National Arboretum says (article here) it has developed a strain of hemlock tree that is resistant to the wooly adelgid, a sap-sucking pest that is decimating populations of the tree throughout the Eastern Seaboard. New Hampshire has the...
N.H. traffic has bottomed out (I think)
Traffic through the state's E-Zpass lanes rose very slightly last week after collapsing since the lockdowns began in March. It appears we've hit bottom as far as open roads goes.
N.H. patents, April 12-19
By Targeted News Service The following federal patents were assigned to in New Hampshire from April 12 to April 19. *** Allegro Microsystems Assigned Patent for Efficient Signal Path Diagnostics Allegro Microsystems, Manchester, New Hampshire, has been assigned a...
Except for the very young, COVID is infecting all age groups
The first demographic breakdown of COVID-19 in New Hampshire was released by the state Department of Health and Human Services yesterday, and among other things it shows that positive COVID cases are being found at roughly the same rate in all age groups older than...
Flying to Mars vs. social isolating – which is more stressful?
From a personal-stress point of view, COVID-19 lockdowns are kind of like going to Mars, although the view isn’t quite as interesting. We don’t have cosmic radiation or microgravity to concern us while living in small spaces for weeks at a time, but we do have plenty...
Lots of vacation homes, lots of virus
Data-crunching by Jess Carson, a research assistant professor with the Vulnerable Families Research Program at the Carsey School of Public Policy., finds a correlation between lots of vacation homes and relatively high rates of COVID-19. Notice I said correlation, not...
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