Sci/tech tidbits in and around New Hampshire
Not geeky but I like it: Remembering Marty on the Mountain
(I wrote this piece for the Concord Monitor. It's not in the usual Granite Geek vein but certain readers might enjoy it anyway.) When you talk to old-time New Hampshire folks about “that funny guy who used to do the weather on TV,” there’s a split. In the southern...
Monadnock Energy gets solar award
Solar farm developer Monadnock Energy, presumably based somewhere around Peterborough judging from the name, is one of the winners of the first round of a contest by the U.S. Department of Energy's Solar Energy Technologies Office. Called the American-Made Community...
NH solar homes get more Zillow views than in any other state – does that stat mean anything?
The site MarketWatch says home with solar get more average views on Zillow in New Hampshire than in any other state. That sounds impressive, but is it really? (Full article is here, with some state-v-state and city-v-city data about solar homes, scraped from Zillow.)...
You know what stone walls need? A taxonomy!
Robert Thorson, a professor of Earth sciences at the University of Connecticut, has been thinking for many years about stone walls, those iconic structures that fill the woods of New England. This thinking has led him to what sounds like a ridiculous conclusion:...
NH patents through Jan. 7
(Links to each patent can be found here, using the patent number or inventor’s name.) By Targeted News Service WASHINGTON – The following federal patents were assigned in New Hampshire through Jan. 7. *** System and Method for Aerial to Ground Registration DEKA...
Turns out we haven’t actually dodged the winter COVID surge
Back in December I was clinging to hope – irrationally, but isn’t all hope irrational at heart? – that we would dodge the winter COVID surge. No such luck. As of Thursday, the New Hampshire Hospital Association says more people are in its beds with COVID-19 than at...
ChatGPT as a mock patient to train new doctors
A professor at the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth has an interesting use for large language models: Using them to role-play patients for medical students. (Full story from the school is here) Medical schools often employ people who act as patients based on a...
Jan. 9 conversation about flooding in NH
The SEE Science Center in Manchester is holding a Science on Tap discussion on January 9th. Science on Tap events are informal discussions with local scientists and experts on a particular topic. 2023-2024 is the eleventh season of Science on Tap . On Tuesday...
Announcing the goofiest proposed bill in NH (although I could easily have missed some goofiness)
EDIT: The bill was killed. When I posted on reddit that two bills seeking to get NH to use gold and silver as currency were the dumbest proposed bills in the New Hampshire legislature this year, I was pointed to this chemtrail gem (HB1700): AN ACT prohibiting the...
It takes a lot of ice to open New Hampshire’s unique ice runway, but not because of the planes
As the region’s aviation community anxiously awaits the annual yes-or-no decision about whether the Alton Bay Ice Runway will open, here’s a tidbit to consider: Keeping Cessnas and Beechcraft from crashing through as they land isn’t why officials have to wait until...
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