Sci/tech tidbits in and around New Hampshire
I’m not the only one trying to honor the creation of BASIC
As a loyal reader, you know that I am in the midst of a drive to create a highway historical marker honoring the creation of the computer language BASIC and the Dartmouth Time-Sharing System. (Here's a reminder, if you need it.) I gathered more than enough signatures...
From fruit thieves to road kill, those $%^#! squirrels are everywhere
(Squirrels and chipmunks wiped out my raspberries and peaches and blueberries this year - they are a plague. Road kill is justifiable payback.) The population explosion of squirrels and other small rodents in New Hampshire is proving to be a nuisance in more ways than...
Dockless bikes in Nashua are a hit, maybe
Veoride, an Indiana-based company that runs dockless bike operations around the country, including at New England College in Henniker, says its biggest New Hampshire operation hit 10,000 rides in two months. The company announced the number on its blog, saying it hit...
Knowing the shape of solar ejections can help analyze space weather
From UNH News Service: Revisiting some older data, researchers at the University of New Hampshire discovered new information about the shape of coronal mass ejections (CMEs) – large-scale eruptions of plasma and magnetic field from the sun – that could one day help...
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...
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