Sci/tech tidbits in and around New Hampshire
Electricity-to-storable-gas eyed for Maine
Good story (as usual) from Tux Turkel, Portland Press-Herald's long-time energy writer, about the possibility of using excess power from Maine onshore wind farms, which are constrained by the grid, to generate hydrogen or methane that could then be shipped and burned....
Boomer is surprised to find how much e-sports is like sports
Like all humans, I regard the things that I did as a teen and pre-teen to be the proper activities for those age groups and I scorn things that have become popular since then. Playing basketball on a team, for example, is normal but playing networked computer games on...
NH gets closer to an EV-charging network
While I was on vacation, New Hampshire released an RFP (Request for Proposals) to build an @NH_OSI and the @nhdes have released an RFP for an electric vehicle charging stations along high-travel routes. NHPR notes that they "may or may not be free to use." and "would...
Bald eagles attack loons, but that’s not why loons are struggling
Bald eagles, as I'm sure you know, are making quite the comeback in New Hampshire (along with much of North America). New Hampshire Audubon and the Loon Preservation Committee wondered what effect this large fish-eating predator was having on another iconic...
Engineered lumber doesn’t like southern NH trees
Had a great Science Cafe discussion Wednesday about engineered lumber, a.k.a. mass timber a.k.a. cross-laminated timber, and its present and future role in construction. Because I moderate these sessions, walking around with a microphone a la Phil Donohue, I can't...
Mass. is renumbering highway exits – is N.H. next?
New Hampshire is one of four states that numbers exits on interstates sequentially, instead of by mileage from the start of the road. I wrote about this issue in 2017, when Rhode Island made the switch: If the 15th exit is 39 miles from the border, should it be Exit...
N.H. is growing slowly, but that doesn’t mean the population is stagnant
New Hampshire's population has been growing slowly, or not at all, for the past decade or so. But Ken Johnson, the state's demography guru, says that is slightly misleading. Here's an email he sent me about his latest research: Of all the things about NH demographic...
Museum bought that weird Manchester house
The Currier Museum in Manchester bought the Usonian Automatic house in that city, a rare example of the failed attempt by Frank Lloyd Wright to create cheap but good-looking homes that could be built by the homeowners. The two-bedroom, 1,400-sq.-ft home is made of a...
The ranked-choice ballots are pouring in
(Addendum: Science Cafe NH in Concord for January will talk about alternative voting. We discussed it just a year but it looks like there's still a ton of interest in the topic. Science Cafe takes December off.) My little ranked-choice-voting experiment with the...
What makes a forest-destroying bug? The trees
For each major tree-killing species of invasive bug, around half a dozen foreign insects live quietly in our forests, causing few noticeable problems. A new study may help scientists pick out the future tree killers from the crowd, and it has a surprising conclusion:...
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