Sci/tech tidbits in and around New Hampshire
They no longer need a bigger boat
From UNH News Service: A new ocean-going research vessel is on the horizon for scientists at the University of New Hampshire that will expand their capability to track ocean currents, conduct seafloor studies, and further research on food web dynamics and fish...
Vermont utility says ‘virtual power plant’ saved it $500K in the heat wave
Green Mount Power, the statewide utility in Vermont, is ahead of the curve on many Grid 2.0 technologies - partly because it's so small (just 265,000 residential and business customers) that it can "pivot" quickly, partly because its customers are Vermonters are are...
You say you want another podcast?
On most weeks (although not this one, due to scheduling issues) I talk with NHPR's Peter Biello about my column in the Concord Monitor. Since the listening public can't get enough of my mellifluous speaking voice, at The Monitor we've started an occasional podcast in...
So a potato chip bag won’t shield your key fob – but aluminum foil will
Remove that aluminum foil from your head and wrap it around your key fob, folks - that'll protect it from being used by car thieves in a way that won't be done by potato chip bags, as I found out last week . You want to know more? Check out the USAToday article....
Highest high temperatures are bad, but highest low temperatures might be worse
This is my column, which ran Tuesday July 10 in the Monitor. By coincidence (or, rather, because multiple reporters get story ideas from obvious phenomena like a wicked bad heat wave) a couple of major outlets ran similar analysis later in the week, including Inside...
Tech history nerds: Concord had one of the first examples of three-phase industrial power!
Sewalls Falls Recreation Area in north Concord is a lovely spot along the Merrimack River that includes some big, decaying industrial buildings, old cement walls and weird piles of rock in the river. It's all the result of the area's history as a pre-World War I...
‘Hagfish slime, which has been described as the grossest super-material in existence’
By Sarah Schaier, UNH| Hagfish slime, which has been described as the grossest super-material in existence, might be one of the most unique biomaterials known known to humankind — and UNH scientist and assistant professor David Plachetzkihas received a grant from the...
Pay for parking in Nashua via an app (at 32 cents a pop)
Nashua is launching a pay-for-parking-via-app system, as reported in the Nashua Telegraph: Starting on Main Street, small decals with a four-digit number will be affixed to the meters at all of the roughly 900 spots, moving outward to the other parking zones during...
Driverless car testing in NH vetoed by governor, leaving us in autonomous limbo
UPDATE JULY 8: Ethan DeWitt has a followup analysis which says that in theory this leaves NH open to any and all autonomous car testing, since we have no laws addressing them at all. Read it here. A fatal crash involving a self-driving car in Arizona was one of the...
I used to call our refrigerator an ‘ice box’ – here’s a real-world example
I have a story in the Monitor today about a program at a Rockywold-Deephaven Camps in Holderness that uses ice blocks, cut from Squam Lake in January, to keep food cold in "ice boxes". You should check it out because it's got great photos of hauling 110-pound blocks...
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