Sci/tech tidbits in and around New Hampshire
Reinventing the power grid on coastal Maine (sort of)
If I was going to redesign the national power grid, perhaps the biggest and most complicated thing that the human species has ever created, I wouldn’t think of starting in a quiet part of coastal Maine. But maybe I should. “We figured if we could do this in Boothbay,...
‘Amazing Stories’ is in TV production
Regular readers will know that the original science fiction magazine "Amazing Stories" has developed a New Hampshire connection, since a state resident bought the rights to the name and relaunched it, first online and most recently (as I noted here) in print. A...
Hedgehogs are cute, but one in NH carried an incredibly rare virus
From UNH News Service: A pathologist with the New Hampshire Veterinary Diagnostic Lab at the University of New Hampshire has identified the first case of Skunk Adenovirus-1 in the United States. The rare respiratory disease was found in tissues of a hedgehog...
Who should draw NH political boundaries – people or algorithms?
As the Concord Monitor reports today, there's a new push to have an impartial group of people, rather than the political party in power, draw legislative boundaries in New Hampshire. Similar pushes are being made around the country in response to concern about...
Were the White Mountains once as tall as the Himalayas?
NHPR reporter Sam Evans-Brown does a regular answer-reader-question feature called Ask Sam. This week's takes on a question I hadn't really thought about: How tall were the Appalachian Mountains, including the White Mountains, when they were first formed by plate...
New England has plenty of electricity this winter unless things go really wrong
There are enough power plants, power lines and systems in place to provide all the electricity that New England will need this winter, according to the organization that operates the six-state electric grid. ISO New England said Wednesday the grid can meet demand,...
Our snow will disappear, but perhaps not as quickly as we feared
Here is my Concord Monitor column this week (Nov. 27): This column will discuss the way a major climate model is overly pessimistic about the coming disappearance of snow and skiing from New Hampshire due to climate change. In other words, it’s a bit of good news...
N.H. once had 172 ski areas that are now closed – yes, 172!
In the 1950s and 1960s, a ton of little ski areas opened through New England: Any farmer with a big slanted field would haul an old Ford engine to the top and make a rope tow, trying to get a few bucks in the winter. Virtually all of them shut down in the 1970s...
The fungus that kills gypsy moths has scientists puzzled
One of the biocontrol successes of recent years involves the fungus Entomophaga maimaiga, which was introduced into the U.S. to control the gypsy moth caterpillar. It has worked pretty well, turning a forest-destroying scourge into an occasionally irritating pest. But...
The Chinese are making Segway work, but not only with a Segway
Segway occupies a weird space in the history of New Hampshire industry. The self-balancing vehicle developed by Dean Kamen and his merry band of R&D elves at DEKA in Manchester in 2001 may be the best-known invention ever to come out of the state, but it's also...
Return to the Concord Monitor