Sci/tech tidbits in and around New Hampshire
Climate change will hurt our forests, redux
I have been writing newspaper articles about the possible and ongoing effects of climate change on New Hampshire's forests for so long that the first stories weren't even put into any digital archive, so I can't point to them. But the issue is still around, as you can...
A historic building that engineers can love
Concord has what appears to be the nation's best-preserved gasholder, the name for a large building that once held flammable gas made from coal, which was commonly used for municipal lighting in the days before natural gas. It has just been added to the National...
What should we do with all our trees: Replace road salt or replace steel?
Considering that New Hampshire is smack dab in the middle of a region sometimes called the Saudi Arabia of biomass – i.e., we have lots of trees to sell – it’s a little weird that our logging and milling industries are struggling. The problem is that many of the...
“Where’s the NH sea border?” is almost as confusing as “how long is our coast?”
There's a legal fight over federal border checks throughout New Hampshire, which led Seacoast Online to wonder how far into the state the "border" is defined. As they report here, the legal definition (100 air miles from any border) covers virtually all of our little...
No, don’t put that plastic bag in your recycling
An unlikely combination of China’s economic power and plastic bags’ physical messiness has brought new restrictions to curbside recycling in Concord. Concord has increased its efforts to keep plastic bags and plastic film such as cellophane or Bubble Wrap out of its...
More scientific love of blackboards
Regular readers know that my favorite Granite Geek story of recent time involves Dartmouth research into why mathematicians love blackboards. ("Just as surely as a+b=b+a, mathematicians love their blackboards") So I was delighted to stumble across another...
Nobody, not even DEKA, wants to give the state a Stirling engine
Stirling engine fans (boy do they exist – I hear from them all the time) will be disappointed that Dean Kamen’s firm didn’t respond to a state Request For Proposals.
Lobster population in Gulf of Maine has probably peaked (*sob!*)
The days of cheap lobster may be winding down.
The cougar is extinct, long live the cougar!
Since the eastern cougar (not the western one) is extinct, the government realizes it doesn’t need to be on the endangered species list any more.
Could the VW settlement build us an electric car charging network?
After Volkswagen was caught letting people die for profit, they agreed to fork over lots of money so that people wouldn’t get really mad at them and stop buying their stuff. What should NH do with its share?
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