Sci/tech tidbits in and around New Hampshire
The ocean is coming – what should we do?
New Hampshire has the shortest coastline of any state bordering an ocean but it's still long enough and has enough development that sea-level rise and erratic storm surges will cause gazillions of dollars in damage down the road. So what should we do? A new report has...
The lowly culvert can be exciting
I've long been fascinated by culverts, those zillions of pipes that carry small waterways under roads - writing about them (e.g., here) so much that one editor at the Monitor makes jokes about my passion. Culverts interesting because they're a perfect example of...
That’s what a flat roof should look like
The day has long gone when "building unveils solar array" is much in the way of news - but I'll make an exception for Dover High School, which installed a rooftop array so big that it increases the state's (admittedly small) solar capacity by 1.5%. You can see the...
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...
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