Sci/tech tidbits in and around New Hampshire
Maine lawmakers cool to idea of switching to Atlantic time zone
The Portland Press-Herald reports that the Maine state Senate has "effectively tabled" a bill that would let the state switch to Atlantic Standard Time if Massachusetts and New Hampshire decided to do it, as well. The main selling point: No daylight savings time...
Clean your $%^#@ boat trailer, invasive-weed-hauling person!
Fresh-water invasive weeds, of which milfoil is the most common culprit but far from the only one in New Hampshire , don't and walk from lake to lake - we carry them. And often we carry them on boats or the trailers hauling boats. That's why New Hampshire...
NH banking commission can’t regulate bitcoin currency exchanges
New Hampshire is one of the most bitcoin-happy states in the country on a per capita basis, thanks largely to the libertarian, all-government-is-bad group called the Free State Project. The group (seduced, like so many have been, by our "Live Free or Die" state motto)...
What’s Twitter good for? Poop vs. dung
Twitter is mostly useless, but occasionally it's very useful, as I found out this week responding to a thread about dung beetles
Europe is afraid that our lobsters will mate with theirs
There's a fight between Maine and Scandinavia over whether live lobsters can be imported there for food - the Europeans are worried that they will escape and become an invasive species. The latest report from the Portland Press-Herald (this is a big issue in Maine, as...
Post offices photographs your letters – and they’ll email you the pictures
It’s not that I’m lazy, but there are days when I don’t make the 100-yard walk down my driveway to see what’s in the mailbox because – well, it’s 100 yards away. That’s like a dozen trips from the couch to the refrigerator. I don’t miss out, however, because the...
That documentary about NH’s most famous math discovery is out
The documentary about the twin-prime discovery by Yitang "Tom" Zhang, made when he was a lecturer at UNH in Durham, has been released. (I mentioned that it was coming a few months ago). Here are a few details, and the trailer. I'm working on getting it shown up here.
Granite Geek on the Air: The extreme-precipitation edition
I brought my dulcet tones to New Hampshire Public Radio yesterday, as I do most Tuesdays, to talk about my weekly column in The Monitor. This week's column is about a study by a Dartmouth researcher, among others, that looks at "extreme precipitation events' (more...
It’s time to geek out on interchange options for next phase of I-93 expansion
Interstate 93 through Concord is going to be expanded to three lane in each direction over the next decade or so, which means five very close-to-each-other interchanges will be reworked. Over the last three days, the Monitor has presented detailed options for three of...
An Archimedes screw is the secret of a Conn. slow-flow hydropower dam
You probably remember seeing the Archimedes Screw in a high school "simple machines" lesson - it has been used for millennia to raise water short distances as part of irrigation systems. New England Hydropower Co. of Beverly, Mass., has just opened a hydropower plant...
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