Sci/tech tidbits in and around New Hampshire
Can there be a mathematics of altruism?
Dartmouth news has an interesting piece about a mathematics professor, Feng Fu, who is trying to develop a mathematics of altruism: "how to promote cooperation in the most general sense, using very theoretical mathematical models to look at how to prompt people to be...
Telecom firms sue Maine, say they have a right to sell our data
In a follow-up to my post yesterday about proposed laws in New Hampshire keeping firms from selling our cell-phone location data without our permission, comes news from Maine that they don't think that's a good idea. From the Portland Press-Herald story: Four national...
Cell phone, smart speaker, networked doorbell — Soviet spies must be so jealous
One of the painful ironies of today’s world – which seems to stab us with a new painful irony every week or two – is the way we have flipped George Orwell’s Big Brother on its head. The problem isn’t Them secretly watching Us, as “1984” predicted. The problem is Us...
Unique ice runway won’t open for pilots this overly warm winter
The Airline Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association (AOPA), a national organization for private pilots, has announced that the Alton Bay ice runway on Lake Winnipesaukee will not be used this year - the ice never got thick enough. Here's the announcement. It is the...
Mushroom lovers should thank non-picky rodents
From UNH News Service: Small mammals such as mice and chipmunks who are not picky eaters play a more important role than previously known in dispersing the spores of wild mushrooms and truffles, according to new research from the New...
Lyme disease complicates the question: ‘How many deer is enough?’
Deer, as you probably know, are one of the major carriers of the black-legged tick that spreads Lyme and other nasty parasitic diseases when it bites us. Therefore, having fewer deer around would help control the ailment. But how many deer is enough? An essay by a...
Vermont has a ton of solar by NH standards, but will miss its own goal by a lot
Vermont set a goal of having 20% of its annual electricity come from solar by 2025. It will probably miss that goal by as much as one-half, even though it has installed a lot more solar than New Hampshire. Energy Central has the story (here). Vermont would have to...
Hacker who studied elections loves our paper ballots
Reported by Geoff Forester in today's Monitor; I helped with the writing: A nationally known computer hacker, a term he wears proudly, helped keep an eye on New Hampshire’s primary Tuesday but says you didn’t need computer smarts to see that it went well. “One big...
Winters to come: More snow per snowfall but fewer snowfalls (on average)
Anybody who measures precipitation, as I do for the citizen-science group CoCoRaHS, knows that measuring snowfall is hard. It drifts, it compresses over time, there's only a minor correlation between depth and moisture. So it's hard to study and understand over the...
Is it gardening? Is it farming? Does it matter?
Farmers, as you know, grow stuff to eat. Gardeners grow stuff to look at. Or, wait – do they really? That’s the distinction that has always lurked in my head, although I never really thought about it until recently. It turns out that this unspoken assumption, like so...
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