Sci/tech tidbits in and around New Hampshire
Daytime fishers, nighttime bobcats – wildlife changes when humans spread into the woods
From UNH: As Granite Staters move out of New Hampshire cities into more suburban communities, it’s led to increased development in previously rural areas, transforming them into exurbs — area outside the city that are less densly populated than suburbs, but more dense...
Rooftop solar stars: All of New England except guess who
If you measure installed "small-scale solar" per capita, says the federal Energy Information Agency, you'll find five of the six New England states in the top 10. No prizes for guessing who is left out. CleanTechnica article is here. EIA says national capacity of...
“Mullet gardening” or “No-mow May”?
I have a confession to make: I really like the look of a mowed lawn. But I’m trying to kick the habit. I know the classic suburban lawn has the ecological value of a parking lot, that the model of a weekly-mowed monoculture contributes to the alarming decline of...
N.H. patents through Sept. 10
(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 Sept. 10. *** Apparatus for Monitoring, Regulating, or Controlling Fluid...
Feral boar in Vermont probably escaped from NH hunting park (what a surprise)
I'm long thought it's crazy that New Hampshire allows a big, private hunting preserve to have loose wild boars, which are an incredibly destructive menace. It's like allowing somebody to have a zebra mussel farm in Lake Winnipesaukee with assurances that they won't...
UNH heads multi-university project to develop tick monitoring system
From NH Agricultural Station: Thanks in part to a newly awarded grant from the U.S. Geological Survey, researchers at UNH’s NH Veterinary Diagnostic Lab (NHVDL) and the Hubbard Center for Genome Studies (HCGS) — along with partners at UNH’s Research Computing Center,...
My alarming climate change article from … wait, 1989?
Going through a footlocker of old newspaper clips, I found this Science Briefs package that I wrote in the April 9, 1989, edition of the Nashua Telegraph, when I was an editor for the Sunday paper and its Sci/Tech section. This 34-year-old piece might be the first...
Utilities say NH solar net metering doesn’t shift costs
It has long been a claim by New Hampshire anti-solar folks that net metering (paying people with rooftop solar when they send electricity back to the grid) is unfair, shifting costs to people who don't have solar. Not so, say folks who should know: The state's power...
Social media tourist swarm forces idyllic Vermont farm to block them
VTDigger reports that the road to sleepy Hollow Farm, the ultimate Vermont photo site, will be closed during leaf-peeping because Tiktok etc. has increased the tourist flow to unmanageable levels. Full story is here. Last year, in an attempt to address traffic woes,...
Chemistry class explains why the housing crisis got bad so fast
The weird thing about New Hampshire’s housing crisis from my point of view is that it seems to have erupted out of nowhere. One day we had a tight but bearable market for rentals and home ownership; the next day there wasn’t an open apartment south of the White...
Return to the Concord MonitorAbout Granite Geek
Dave Brooks has written a science/tech column since 1991 – yes, that long – and has written this blog since 2006, keeping an eye on topics of geekish interest in and around New Hampshire, from software to sea level rise, population dynamics to printing (3-D, of course). He moderates monthly Science Cafe NH discussions, beer in hand, and discusses the geek world regularly on WGIR-AM radio..
Brooks earned a bachelor’s degree in mathematics but got lost on the way to the Ivory Tower and ended up in a newsroom. He has reported for newspapers from Tennessee to New England. Rummage through his bag of awards you’ll find oddities like three Best Blog prizes from the New Hampshire Press Association and a Writer of the Year award from the N.H. Farm and Forest Bureau, of all places. He joined the Concord Monitor in 2015.