Sci/tech tidbits in and around New Hampshire
Hooray! Study finds unmown lawns aren’t great tick habitat, after all
A study by the Connecticut Agricultural Research Station, in a state that has even more of a tick problem than NH does, did analysis on the places in yards where the little bastards like to live. The conclusion: In residential backyards, blacklegged ticks are most...
NH has passed an interesting data-privacy law
New Hampshire Bulletin has a overview of a new data-privacy law in New Hampshire, with details on how it works and who it applies to when it kicks in, next yearr. Senate Bill 255, which takes effect in January 2025, allows New Hampshire customers to take action to...
Landline phones are annoying, except when they’re not
(I've wanted to do a story about Dunbarton Telephone Co. for a long time. This gave me an excuse!)When the AT&T mobile network went down nationally last month, taking some other networks down with it, folks in Dunbarton were able to shrug things off. “Oftentimes...
Many ‘good news’ stories are really ‘undoing bad news’ stories; here’s one about Mass. cranberry bogs
A big part of creating a commercial cranberry bog involves dumping sand to speed and improve growth of the plants. Climate change is making the bogs on Cape Cod and the islands less productive so some are going out of business. The Boston Globe reports (story is here)...
NH patents through March 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 March 10. *** 4g/5g Core Interworking PARALLEL WIRELESS, INC., Nashua, New...
It wasn’t just us who had a lousy winter
From Axios (story is here): The Lower 48 states just experienced their warmest winter on record this year, with extreme temperature departures from average observed across the northern tier of the country, according to new NOAA data. According to NOAA, some of the...
Airport gets an EV charger – for airplanes
An electric-car-charging station has just been installed at Manchester-Boston Regional Airport. Actually, that isn’t quite accurate. It’s really an electric-car-and-electric-plane-charging station. That might surprise you because there aren’t any electric...
Town of Bow sneaks around NH’s silly municipal solar limit
New Hampshire's anti-solar-power legislature puts a cap of 5 MW on any municipal solar array, if it wants to be net metered (that is, paid for excess power sent into the grid). There's no reason for this cap, which used to be just 1 MW, except that established power...
NH lawmakers take on AI before we understand it, which is fine by me
Here’s a statement I used to firmly believe but now realize is often wrong: “Government should not pick technology winners and losers.” It can be true, of course, but there are times when the representatives of “we the people” need to take the lead away from...
COVID did something good: Made us eliminate a whole strain of flu
All the annoying stuff we did as a result of COVID-19 appears to have had a side-effect, eliminating an entire strain of flu, reports CNN. (Full story is here) For 10 years, Americans have had access to flu shots that protect against four strains of the virus: two A...
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