Sci/tech tidbits in and around New Hampshire
What if the Hurricane of 1938 hit today?
The worst hurricane in New England history unleashed a devastating combination of wind and water 79 years ago, and with hurricanes ravaging the southeast U.S. and the Caribbean, it’s hard not to wonder what would happen if that storm returned today. Frank Magilligan...
More – much, much more – about where exactly is halfway between the equator and the North Pole
Back in June I wrote a story about the 45th parallel, which runs through New Hampshire. The state has two (two!) historical markers noting that you are halfway between the equator and the North Pole at that point. Except you're not really because of geometry, as you...
In attempt to break marathon record, Nike used UNH wind tunnel for R&D
The sports-shoe company Nike tried to get somebody to break the two-hour barrier in running the marathon (26.2 miles). The effort fell just short, but as UNH reports, part of the preparation included wind tunnel tests in Durham at the UNH flow physics facility, which...
Conway is a geothermal hot spot, due to underground radioactivity
Every few years a new study comes out about geothermal power in the U.S., which means that every few years I can talk about how the Conway region is one of the most likely places for geothermal power in the Northeast. I mean real geothermal, which uses high...
Come see (& talk about) a movie concerning the most surprising math in NH history
As promised last week, I'm hosting a talk next Tuesday (Sept. 26) after a showing of "Counting From Infinity" - here's my column from the Monitor discussing it: No matter how many bar arguments you’ve been involved in, I’ll bet you’ve never heard one around the...
Watch the video of Science Cafe about regenerative medicine & ARMI in Manchester
Concord TV, the community access channel in the state capitol, films each month's Science Cafe Concord and puts it online. They share the file with other community-access channels across the country and tell me that lots of other stations rebroadcast it. We seem to be...
Changes in daylight, changes in temperature – it’s leaf-peeping time!
It's pretty much de rigueur for New England news outlets to run some sort of "ever wonder why leaves change color each fall?" story each fall. Since this is a blog, I don't have to write it - I can steal it! There are plenty of places to swipe from; I like the...
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....
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