Sci/tech tidbits in and around New Hampshire
Days are getting shorter, trees are getting webbier
There are certain rituals which signal the coming end of New Hampshire’s summer, and one of them is showing up at the end of tree branches all over the place. “Drive down any street and you’ll see them,” said Kevin Clough, owner of K. Clough Landscaping & Design...
Just because we’re getting old doesn’t mean we have to get poor
You know how the "silver tsunami" is going to devastate our economy? Maybe not, says this article in Technology Review from MIT: Her guess is that productivity has fallen as the population ages because the most skilled and experienced people have left in larger...
The quadratic equation as customer-amusing graffiti
The Farmhouse Cafe in Dunbarton has lots of cute little things to look at, like many such eateries. One of them is this counter bell covered with little painted sayings. I was stunned to see, however, that they're mathy sayings! Including the quadratic equation!!! The...
Some bats may be adapting to white-nose syndrome
I'll take any scrap of good environmental news I can find these days, so I jumped all over a report from SevenDays, the independent Vermont publication, that little brown bats in that state are showing signs of starting to adapt to white-nose syndrome. White-nose...
History of wind power ignores N.H., which had the first wind farm
The nation's first real wind farm - multiple power-producing wind turbines feeding into the grid - was built in New Hampshire, on Crotched Mountain in Francestown in 1980. It was a research project from UMass-Amherst; I have written about it before - read the details...
There’s a lot of coal piled at this NH power plant
Over my career I have gotten tired of publicity stunts by activists even, though I sympathize with their desire to draw attention to issues that are easy to overlook. So I was going to ignore a stunt in front of the New Hampshire State House - site of many stunts, as...
99 pints of blood in the bank, 99 pints of my blood …
99 pints of blood in the bank, 99 pints of my blooda poke in my vein, a 6-minute drain100 pints of blood in the bank ... Yes, I've hit the century mark in the draining-precious-bodily-fluid department. Don't you want to hear more? Of course you do - so click right...
Solar boat-cleaning unit battles invasive weeds
One of the main ways that freshwater invasive plants move from pond to pond and lake to lake is through boats - you do some boating Gorham Pond in Dunbarton in Concord and then move to Lake Sunapee, not realizing that you picked up some milfoil on your craft or boat...
Why does N.H. forbid raw milk ice cream but not raw milk yogurt?
Raw milk is a touchy subject. Some people who think that pasteurization - heating it to a certain degree for a certain period of time to kill off the pathogens that just love to grow in milk - is sometimes unnecessary, ruins the flavor and has some effects on milk's...
‘Patent troll’ isn’t defamatory because nobody knows exactly what it means
There's been a long legal fight in New Hampshire between banks and an inventor who says he has patents covering ATM machines. The bankers say he's a patent troll; he got mad and sued and it made it to the state Supreme Court. Their ruling? "Patent troll" might be...
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