Sci/tech tidbits in and around New Hampshire
Alas, the hemlock wooly adelgid shrugged off the “polar vortex”
There are a lot of insect pests that don't thrive in New Hampshire because of our cold winters. Our winters are getting less cold, or at least less long, and some of them are sneaking north with dire consequences. One of those is the hemlock wooly adelgid, which has...
Coal is rarely used to produce power in N.E. – oil, virtually never
The above clip is taken from the draft Regional System Plan from ISO-New England, the folks who run the six-state power grid. There's a big conference in Boston today discussing the issue of how to deal with all the changes - mostly the growth of solar/wind and the...
New type of pituitary cell found in lampreys at UNH
By UNH News Service: Discovering a new type of cell is a remarkable accomplishment for any scientists. Tim Marquis, who graduated in 2015 with his bachelor’s degree in biomedical science from the University of New Hampshire, can check that off his bucket list....
N.H. gets a pittance from settlement over Lenovo spyware that used man-in-the-middle attack
New Hampshire will receive more than $50,000 as the result of a settlement with the company Lenovo for selling laptops loaded with advertising software that could snoop on owners’ web surfing, which created a security hole that left the machines vulnerable to hackers....
I got to write a story with “death ray” in the lede! (It’s about a local company that makes laser safety equipment)
If you want to get overly dramatic about it, you could say that Kentek, a company that has been in Pittsfield for 34 years, is in the business of protecting us from death rays. “A laser basically evaporates materials, melts them. That’s how it drills,” explained Tom...
Maybe it’s a digital-info world – but at the library it’s still very analog
I wrote a story about the Concord city library adding a second digital service - Hoopla Digital to supplement the statewide New Hampshire Downloadable Books service operated by the firm OverDrive - and it was interesting to report, but to me the biggest fact was this:...
My mother’s dad grew table grapes in California in the 1940s; maybe I can grow them in NH in the 2010s
From UNH News Service: University of New Hampshire researchers have found certain varieties of seedless table grapes grow better in New Hampshire’s colder climate than others. The research project, funded by the New Hampshire Agricultural Experiment Station, aims to...
Bad year for piping plovers on N.H. beaches
From New Hampshire Fish and Game: It was a difficult summer for the state-endangered and federally threatened piping plovers on Hampton and Seabrook beaches this year. This summer, three pairs nested on Hampton Beach with two chicks fledged (25+ days old), while on...
No N.H. entrants in annual design-a-better-wood-stove competition
There's a Massachusetts firm among the 14 wannabe finalists for the 2018 Wood Stove Design Challenge, but nobody from New Hampshire made the list. The competition is a sort of mini X-Prize-ish attempt to push innovation in an area that doesn't get a lot of geeky...
Today is the anniversary of the first motorized Mt. Washington ascent – in a steam-powered car
From Crispin Battles, Marketing Director for the Mt. Washington Auto Road: Completed in 1861, the road to the summit the Northeast's highest mountain was originally referred to as the Mt. Washington Carriage Road. Motorized vehicles were still several decades away...
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