Sci/tech tidbits in and around New Hampshire
For online reviews, it’s ‘in mobile we trust’
How do you know which online reviews are real, honest opinions, and which ones are just propaganda or hidden advertising? A Dartmouth researcher found that one cue people use, probably unconsciously, is whether the review was written on a smartphone, or typed at a...
Humans will never colonize Mars
There's no New Hampshire angle to this one, except for throwing cold water on all the hard science fiction fans in the state who dream of terraforming Mars. But I'm going to point to this piece on Gizmodo: "Humans will never colonize Mars" - because it's interesting...
UNH veterinary lab finds a new virus in chimney swifts
(I profiled this lab when it opened in 2015 in this article.) From UNH News Service: Pathologists with the New Hampshire Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory at the University of New Hampshire have identified the first reported virus in chimney swifts, an adenovirus...
Biochar in Vermont
Biochar, which is sort of like charcoal,- is one of those products that seems too good to be true. Basically you burn low-grade wood in an enclosed space (pyrolysis) to create a substance that is praised as a soil amendment and eyed as a way to take carbon from the...
If the tree won’t go to the ultrasound, the ultrasound must go to the tree
How do you know whether a tree is rotten inside and might fall on your building? The same way you know whether humans are rotten inside: do an ultrasound. For more details, check my story in today's Monitor.
Solar carports in N.H.
Solar carports make a ton of sense. There's nothing more wasteful than a big parking area, so why not cover it with solar panels and at least get a little electricity out of it, while slightly reducing the need for summertime air conditioning in cars parked there....
More about that disc of messages that Apollo 11 left on the moon
As part of my 50th anniversary of Apollo 11 package, I mentioned a disc that Aldrin and Armstrong left on the moon which had microscopic messages from world leaders etched on it. It has a very tenuous New Hampshire connection - it was made by Sprague Electric in...
No power record over the nasty weekend, which is a good thing
This weekend's miserable weekend didn't quite cause New England to set a new record for electricity production: We maxed out Sunday at 23,917 MW, shy of the weekend record of 24,688 back in 2013, and well short of the all-time high of 28,130 MW on a Wednesday in 2006....
That baby turkey – is it quail size or pigeon size?
Wild turkeys have become so common in New Hampshire since their reintroduction four decades ago, you wouldn't biologists need any help keeping track. I see at least one virtually every time I drive anywhere. But New Hampshire Fish and Game would still like your...
A carbon-negative development sounds too good to be true
I wrote today about an ambitious - maybe unrealistic - proposal for a carbon-negative development in southern New Hampshire, with as many as three dozen units and a farm. You can read about it here. The incentive, of course, is the climate emergency, an over-the-top...
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