Sci/tech tidbits in and around New Hampshire
As fresh water gets saltier, New Hampshire looks for new ways to address the cause
New Hampshire Bulletin has a story looking at the constant, and increasing, problem of road salt, which is spread to make roads less dangerous, is contaminating fresh water. Because the ions that make up road salt don’t evaporate or break down, and plants don’t...
New England wind power sets a new record (barely)
ISO-NE, the folks who run the six-state power grid, says we had 1,332 MW of wind power on the grid at about 7 am. Thursday. That represented almost 10% of the total system load at the time and was a record output - but only by 17 MW. Worse, it was less than 100 MW...
Making hiking trails is like building a highway while bushwacking
In many aspects of life, the old ways are the good ways. Building a path to hike up a mountain is not, however, one of those aspects. “We love our old historic trails but there are better ways to lay them out,” said Erik Samia, Trails Training Program Supervisor for...
Droughts and warming winters mean the East may have to rethink the whole idea of ski season
I was planning on doing a pre-ski-season story on the effect of the drought on ski area's snowmaking, but Molly Rains of the New Hampshire Bulletin did it first, and did it much better. Her article (you can read it here) touches on the possibility that for a variety...
NH patents through Oct. 12
Links to each patent can be found here, using the patent number or inventor’s name.) By Targeted News Service WASHINGTON – The following federal patents were assigned in New Hampshire through Oct. 12. Plasma Arc Torch HYPERTHERM, INC., Hanover, New Hampshire has been...
Can last century’s tree devastation shed light on this century’s tree devastation?
UNH researchers are examining the long-term ecological effects of the chestnut blight, which in the course of a couple decades a century ago wiped out one of the dominant tree species on the entire Eastern Seaboard, to see if it can help them predict what will happen...
NH man may be first charged under new ‘deepfake’ law
A motorcyclist from Gilford may be the first person in the state prosecuted under a new law making "deepfakes" a crime - in this case, audio fakery rather than video. The story in the Laconia Daily Sun says the 21-year-old made "an audio likeness" of a Laconia police...
NH: We must make roads safer – as long as we don’t do anything to annoy drivers
You will be astonished to hear that New Hampshire's "roadmap to safer roads" talks about enforcement and laws and penalties and says almost nothing about road design (except gosh, we should try to keep people from going the wrong way on divided highways) and nothing...
Law, order and ‘artificial intelligence’ in the courtroom
The Monitor's Catherine McLaughlin has a long piece in today's paper about a lawsuit that featured fake A.I.-generated citations, "perhaps the first of its kind in New Hampshire", and what that means. It was a garden-variety lawsuit in the state of New Hampshire. A...
National pro-vaccine group comes to NH
A national pro-vaccine group has opened a chapter in New Hampshire, the eleventh state in which it has done so. American Families for Vaccines said the chapter "organization will "work to promote science-based legislation and initiatives in the Granite State." The...
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