Sci/tech tidbits in and around New Hampshire
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...
Origami is awesome & math-y origami is awesomer – at PSU museum
The father-son team of mathematician/artists Erik Demaine (famous for his mathematical origami) and Martin Demaine will give a talk and hands-on presentation at the Museum of the White Mountains at Plymouth State University from 3:30 to 5 p.m. on Thursday, Feb. 16, in...
NH House: If Mass. goes to Atlantic time zone, we will too
The New Hampshire House of Representatives has supported a bill that says New Hampshire will shift to the Atlantic Time Zone, dumping daylight savings, if Massachusetts does it first. Here is the Union-Leader story. I reported on this bill a couple of weeks ago and...
The beauty of solar power, the “ugliness” of solar panels
Great story in the Monitor today from Nick Reid, who takes a pretty routine zoning case about solar panels next to a church and reflects the whole debate over neighborhood character, renewable energy and how we make choices. Just go ahead and read it here.
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