Sci/tech tidbits in and around New Hampshire
In chainsaw mode, CRISPR could fight “superbug” bacteria
Great line in a Gizmodo story (worth reading: right here) about a variant of the CRISPR technique being eyed for killing "superbug" bacteria that are resistant to antibiotics: If CRISPR-Cas9 is a genetic scalpel, CRISPR-Cas3 is a chainsaw. As the story explains, Cas3...
Record highs are beating record lows by 100-1 this month
Mashable has a good discussion of how insanely warm February has been in the U.S. (Concord, for example, broke a 142-year-old record for high temperarue on Feb. 22): Through Feb. 22, daily record highs have been blowing away daily record lows by a greater than...
Turning wood into liquid fuel (“cellulosic biofuel”) is hard … or is it?
Nature has been honing the design of plant cells for many megaclarke years (to use the Potrzebie Systems of Weights and Measures because - well, why not?) and has developed some very tough cell walls, especially in cellulose, which acts as a support system for stems,...
After 230,000 miles, what’s my hybrid car’s savings compared to a similar non-hybrid?
Get the calculator for some dollar-and-cents fuel savings calculations.
Pro-science rally in Boston on Sunday
On Sunday, scientists, science advocates, and others will rally at Boston’s Copley Square to call for what orgaznies say is "increased vigilance to defend science against the barrage of attacks mounted by the Trump administration and Congress. The rally coincides with...
A shocking depiction on film: People who are good at math and yet … normal!?!?!
NOTE: If you subscribe to my newsletter, you saw this last week. So why not subscribe - right here! I recently saw "Hidden Figures," the movie about the black women "computers" who helped the early NASA manned launches, and it was great. Anybody who reads this...
Science fans to rally in Boston during AAAS meeting
Large anti-government protests in Boston are becoming more common than large celebrating-a-sports-championship rallies - and there will be another one on Sunday. It will have a geeky twist because it coincides with the huge American Association for the Advancement of...
Number of fishers in NH is declining, probably, but why?
There's something really cool about fishers, the large weasel-like predator that lives in northern woodlands. (Not "fisher cat" despite the baseball team's name - they aren't cats.) (Although they don't eat fish, either; what a misnamed beast.) I think I've seen one...
Could NH’s coal-fired power plant switch to partly burning wood?
It would be good for the planet but bad for New England's grid if we shut down Merrimack Station, the 465-megawatt coal-fired power plant in Bow, N.H. We're losing so many baseload power plants - coal-fired and nuclear - that it's getting to be a little dicey keeping...
Engineers use objective (well – mostly objective) methods to choose bridges to fix
New Hampshire has eight engineers with the Department of Transportation who inspect our 3,846 bridges, each of them at least once every two years. How do they decide which ones to fix? Good question - which is why I looked into it in my column this week. You can read...
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