Sci/tech tidbits in and around New Hampshire
As a commuter with grown children, I hate the start of school
(I wrote this last year for the Monitor. I expected to get lots of praise from other commuters - instead, all I got was "why do you hate children?!?!?" emails.) No disrespect to the nation’s public-school transportation network, but I hate it in late August when the...
The Ig Nobels are coming and you can quiz their creator at Science Cafe NH
(Note: At this event I will have a petition to sign, supporting my push to create a state historical marker honoring the birth of BASIC. That makes two reasons to show up!) Every cat owner knows that felines don’t obey the rules of physics. Every chef knows that dry...
Webworms are ugly but not a real problem
Journalists both love and hate stories that come around every year, like back-to-school advances and Black Friday stories. We hate them because they're repetitive, but we love them because they're no-brainers. Almost as soon as I came to New Hampshire I created my own...
Governor hopes an Alaska tree can cut down on Lyme disease
(Addendum: Turns out, you can buy some noonkatone for yourself - $51 a gram. "Nootkatone, crystalline is used as an effective repellent in mosquitos, bed bugs, lone star ticks and head lice. It is also used as a food additive and flavoring material in beverages. It...
Court: Data from smart meters don’t constitute an unreasonable search
New technology always brings new concerns. Here's a case in point. Electric utilities all over the country, such as New Hampshire Electric Cooperative, are installing "smart meters" in place of the old analog meters with little dials that had to be read once a month...
Determining snowfall records can be tricky
I have been measuring daily precipitation for eight years for CoCoRaHS, a "citizen science" weather data-gathering program. The biggest thing I have learned is to not take snow measurements very seriously. The days are long gone when I'd brag that my town got 12...
Hydroponic “farm” in a shipping container in Concord
Time has taken its toll on Concord’s most unusual “farm,” the hydroponic trailer that has provided lettuce to a Marriott hotel for almost five years, but fans of high-tech leafy greens needn’t fret – a replacement is on its way. “It needed to be rehabbed quite a bit....
We are ‘abnormally dry’ and record wet at the same time
(Give you ears a treat: You can listen to me talk about this story on the low-budget Granite Geek podcast) Right now in Concord, we are living in a meteorological puzzle: The National Weather Service says this is the wettest August since records began being kept 150...
And now, the world’s best sewage-related acronym
NHPR has story about plans to built a grease-recycling facility in Plymouth to help community sewage-treatment plants deal with FOG, which stands for fats, oils and grease: FOG, which comes from places like commercial kitchens, can cause costly, unsanitary sewer...
At UNH, studying how traffic lights can talk to cars
When I was a kid, futuristic visions of self-driving cars always assumed they would need all sorts of wires and gizmos installed in the roadway to give the car information about where it was, what it was doing, and where it should go. We didn't think computers and...
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