Sci/tech tidbits in and around New Hampshire
It’s been a while since a reader claimed to have disproved Einstein
One of the pleasures of being a (very) minor public figure associated with science is that sometimes I hear from people who have "disproved" major findings. In my earlier, more self-assured days I called these folks "cranks" - as in "Mathematical Cranks," the...
Dartmouth professor wins Templeton Prize, an unusual mix of science and spirituality
The Templeton Prize is one of the major prizes in science - $1.4 million in prize money helps - but it's a bit of an oddball because it emphasizes the non-quantifiable part of human knowledge. It was awarded today to Marcelo Gleiser, a cosmologist at Dartmouth. The...
Granny apartments – er, I mean, accessory dwelling units – join the state’s housing mix
Now that in-law apartments are no longer outlawed, New Hampshire towns are working on the details of what is turning out to be a small, if intriguing, part of the region’s housing mix. “We’ve had maybe four of them, if that,” said Stephanie Giovannucci, interim Town...
Electronic voter check-in got tested during town meeting voting
Voters were missing something when they showed up at the polls Tuesday in the town of Milford: The alphabet. For the first time in memory the polling stations in the middle school gymnasium lacked signs directing voters to a specific clerk depending on the first...
People want good news but not enough to keep a newspaper open
Amidst the national (global) decline of print journalism, the closing of the Suncook Valley Sun, a free weekly based in Pittsfield, isn't a big deal. It had no reporters and depended on submissions from readers, either columns or letters. They fell into categories:...
Science Cafe is back in Concord: Genes, genealogy and cold cases
One of the most surprising big-picture changes that has taken place during my life is the way biology has taken the mantel of “most interesting scientific field” from physics. When I was a kid, all the little geeks wanted to become physicists. Physics had relativity...
It’s March Madness month, for CoCoRaHS
Regular readers will know that for close to a decade I've measured precipitation every day for a national citizen-science group called CoCoRaHS (Community Collaborative Rain Hail Snow network). I mention it so often that some readers have made fun of me for it ("go...
Celebrate World Water Day – tour a sewage plant
What better way to spend your lunch hour than visiting the local sewage-treatment plant? That's not a joke - wastewater plants are fascinating places full of interesting engineering solutions and they usually don't smell bad. I heartily recommend touring one if you...
Living on Mars (well – Utah) with 3-D printers and drones
If you were looking to set up a geek trifecta, you could do worse than to combine 3D printing, drones and a mission to Mars. Erika Rydberg, a Concord resident and 3D printing expert with the interesting job title of Digital Creation Technologist at Plymouth State...
Why do boys have so much more autism than girls?
From UNH News Service Researchers at the University of New Hampshire are one step closer to helping answer the question of why autism is four times more common in boys than in girls after identifying and characterizing the connection of certain proteins in the brain...
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