Sci/tech tidbits in and around New Hampshire
Less snow means fewer beetles in our woods (which is a bad thing)
A long-running study at Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest - where long-running studies are the norm - found that the population of beetles fell an incredible 83% between mid 1970s and mid 2010s. The most likely cause? Less snow. The finding indicates "that snow cover...
Nitrogen, carbon and forests
Researchers with the NH Agricultural Experiment Station at the University of New Hampshire have received a National Science Foundation Award to better understand how forests and other vegetation control nitrogen and sequester carbon in watersheds and how this dynamic...
Quirky bankruptcy throws a wrench into NH solar
New Hampshire's solar commercial rebate program is being shut to new applications, due to a lack of funds, due mostly to a little-known energy supplier in New Hampshire with some very big contracts that went bankruptcy. Bob Sanders of NH Business Review has the...
Maine is racing toward a floating wind farm
"Despite setbacks and delays, the UMaine project is likely to be the first floating commercial-scale wind farm in the U.S." says Portland Press-Herald's Tux Turkel, probably the most experienced energy reporter still writing for a New England newspaper. UMaine and its...
Science Cafe about linguistics on YouTube
If you missed the Science Cafe in Concord about linguistics, you can watch it online at YouTube, right here.
Burning wood for energy remains a, well, hot topic
Whether it's good or bad to burn wood to create heat and/or electricity is a contentious topic that has been featured here more than once. It has risen to the fore again in New Hampshire because of the shutdown of some biomass electricity plants up north as part of a...
Zero-waste at home is hard – and to a certain extent, irrelevant
I am not a fan of "challenges" - you know, when a group or person says "I am issuing a challenge for you to do XYZ!" rather than saying "You should do XYZ because of these reasons". Challenges strike me as a cheap way to make a point of view seem more noble or...
A 99% accurate medical test is wrong half the time. Why?
Here’s a riddle for you: How can a medical test that is 99% accurate be wrong half the time, even when it is performed correctly? The answer: When the disease is rare. That doesn’t seem to make much sense – testing is even more important when a disease is rare, isn’t...
Despite that small coastline, N.H. wants a piece of offshore wind
The United States seems to be finally waking up to the realization that offshore wind farms are a relatively painless, although not cheap, method of generating large-scale renewable energy. As NHPR reports, New Hampshire doesn't want to be left out: New Hampshire,...
4,000 sticks along North Country highways – appropriate technology in action
If you want to make sure that your snowplows don't hit roadside reflector poles that are buried in snow, how do you mark them? If you're in a tree-filled place like the White Mountains, why not use trees? Like, say, 4,000 of them? That's what I wrote about in the...
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