Sci/tech tidbits in and around New Hampshire
Nationwide testing for COVID would have a mathematical drawback
Obviously the United States needs lots and lots more testing for COVID-19 to determine who is and isn't carrying it. Future years will look back with horror at the federal government's failure to prepare during the first three months of this year for what everybody...
UNH research prodded state’s low arsenic standard in water
Who says academic research is all ivory tower and no real-world consequences? Not UNH, as they note in this recent release. From UNH News: New Hampshire adopted a new, lower drinking water standard for arsenic last year after University of New Hampshire researchers...
Zoom-bombing shows the perils of a program suddenly becoming very, very popular
(NOTE: I wrote this yesterday. Since then, New York schools have stopped using Zoom because of this concern and Zoom is going to change some settings as of Monday to make bombing harder.) Remember that time you went to a meeting of the local Planning Board, only to...
The collapse in local air traffic, visualized
A data analyst named Steve Deane with Stratos Jet Charters in Orlando, Florida, has been making depictions of plane traffic taken from Flightradar24 to illustrate how much COVID-19 has clobbered commercial aviation. It depends mostly on data from ADS-B transmitters,...
New Hampshire patents
The Concord Monitor runs a list of patents that have been issued recently to companies or individuals in New Hampshire. Check it out.
COVID deaths in Vt. vs. N.H. show why small data sets can mislead
On Twitter today I posted this question: Why is Vermont's death toll per confirmed case so much higher than in New Hampshire? Vt. is 13 out of 293 = 4.4%, NH is 3 out of 367 = 0.8% Fortunately, I was smart enough to add this sentence: "However, the numbers are so...
D-H starts clinical trial for possible COVID treatment
From D-H News: A behind-the-scenes group at Dartmouth-Hitchcock (D-H) research operations leads and investigators has opened a pair of Phase 3 therapeutic studies of a potential treatment for COVID-19 in a remarkable six days. Such tests can typically take 60...
PCBs are still tainting our fish, 45 years after we stopped making them
More than 40 years after the U.S. stopped making the chemicals known as PCBs, the human-made lubricants are still causing problems in New Hampshire including new restrictions on eating fish caught in Squam Lake. The state Department of Environmental Services has...
‘Flight-fear’ did what ‘flight-shaming’ couldn’t
Look at that chart from Flighttrader24.com showing global commercial airline flights this year! I don't think there's been a single event that has such a quick world-wide economic effect since the start of World War II - and even that was more stretched out over time...
Cars are disappearing from NH highways – trucks, not so much
The COVID-19 shutdown continues to be visible on New Hampshire highways – or, rather, invisible, since the big difference is the cars that aren’t there. That’s cars, not trucks: So far, the number of truck trips on the state’s turnpike system hasn’t declined very...
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