Sci/tech tidbits in and around New Hampshire
It’s probably true that weak foliage, not peak foliage, is going to become more common
This fall's leaf peeping has been something of a dud - "peak foliage? how about #weakfoliage" is one Twitter comment I've seen - due largely to the ridiculously warm September and early October we've had, which squelches the production of some of the chemicals that...
ICAD cancer detection systems wins NH High Tech Product of the Year
Manchester, NH – iCAD, Inc., a Nashua-based company, won the favor of the judges and the crowd at the NH High Tech Council’s (Council) 12th Annual Product of the Year Awards. The event was held Thursday, October 12 at the Manchester Country Club. One of the Council’s...
If you see something, say something – about rabbits, that is.
From N.H. Fish and Game: NH Rabbit Reports (nhrabbitreports.org), a new citizen science project sponsored by UNH Cooperative Extension and the New Hampshire Fish and Game Department, with support from the Wildlife Heritage Foundation of New Hampshire, is seeking...
The greatest direct-democracy petition ever: Fixing the geometry of road-sign soccer balls
This has no New Hampshire connection, but it's too good to pass up. There's a petition to the government of the United Kingdom to alter the picture it uses on road signs pointing to soccer ("football") stadiums, because the current logo is geometrically impossible: It...
It’s not easy to make a river stay in place when it doesn’t want to
The Suncook River in Epsom jumped its banks during the 2006 Mother's Day Flood and moved into a sand pit, much to the dismay of the sand pit's owners and owners of other nearby property. It has been chewing its way through the sandy banks ever since, to the point that...
Concord mayors cast a light on The Great Disappearing Facial Hair Mystery
(If you want to listen instead of read, listen to me talk about this weird topic with Peter Biello on NHPR) If you’d like to see an intriguing example of how technology can alter human behavior, pause on the landing between the first and second floors of Concord City...
With driverless cars coming way faster than anyone figured, NH lawmakers scramble to catch up
Last year I reported on a law to study what to do about driverless cars in NH - it was sent to a study committee, which can be sensible for a death knell, depending on how it goes - but the pace of autonomous vehicle adoption just keeps speeding up. A bill is being...
The state’s oldest short-line railroad is still running
If you want a lesson on why running the state’s oldest short-line railroad is tough business, consider the 1994 Retsoff Salt Mine failure, when a small earthquake flooded a mine in western New York State that had been producing road salt for a century. Why does a...
Age before beauty – N.H. needs more “young forests” (which is harder to do than it sounds)
When it comes to convincing the public to support the ecosystem known as early successional forests, Scot Williamson of the Wildlife Management Institute knows he’s got a problem. “They’re ugly,” he said Tuesday. That name doesn’t help, either. “You won’t hear me say...
Warming world will release more carbon from the soil, no matter what we do
By UNH News Service: After 26 years, the world’s longest-running experiment to discover how warming temperatures affect forest soils has revealed a surprising, cyclical response: Soil warming stimulates periods of abundant carbon release from the soil to the...
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