Sci/tech tidbits in and around New Hampshire
Remember the Great Quaker Parrot Controversy of 2011? Now it’s about lobsters
How is a lobster in Sweden like a parrot in Sanbornton? Neither really belongs.
And what am I bid for a nuclear power cooling tower?
In the 1980s I was a reporter in Tennessee and I covered a number of auctions of material from the cancelled Clinch River nuclear power plant. It was pretty cool seeing developers bidding on 20-ton concrete structures and other industrial material. Something like that...
Galactic Tick Day is coming, and it’s got nothing to do with Lyme disease
In one week you can celebrate a delightfully weird astronomical event: Galactic Tick Day. It was created by a group of West Coast science enthusiasts to celebrate the journey that the Solar System takes around the disk of the Milky Way galaxy. The trip takes about 225...
Small Maine town will be part of an international microgrid-of-microgrids
Emera Maine, a smallish electrical utility in Bangord and northern Maine, is entering an interesting experiment, creating a microgird of solar, batteries and backup diesel at its operations center in tiny Hampden, Maine, and hooking that into a microgrid-of-microgrids...
Tonight in Concord: Science Cafe on “coping with climate change”
Tonight (Tuesday, Sept. 20) Science Cafe Concord returns after a summer hiatus to discuss the topic "Coping with Climate Change." I wrote a column in the Monitor today to spur attendance ... AND THEN FORGET TO WRITE WHAT TIME IT STARTS!!!! (Pounds head on desk) it...
Dartmouth launches institute to study “energy and society”
Institutes are an important driver in university research, usually created when a chunk of money is given by a person/place to target a particular topic. Really big institutes have their own offices or even buildings, but usually they exist as a virtual structure...
Road Trip!!!! Dartmouth’s “corpse flower” is about to bloom.
Dartmouth News says that the Life Sciences Greenhouse's "corpse flower" (titan arum) is about to bloom for the first time since 2011, producing the disgusting rotting-body smell that has to be experienced to be believed, or so I've heard. Here's their story. I hope to...
Will you ride my electric bus? (cue early Who nostalgia)
I've always been surprised that delivery vehicles and buses haven't gone the electric-engine route sooner than cars. They're easier to electrify because they have predictable, usually not terribly long, travel paths, and because they return to the same central...
Vermont removes a ‘deadbeat dam’ – one of hundreds in New England
A crummy little dam - 5 feet high, made of interlocking steel plates (a design that's new to me) was removed from the White River in Vermont this week, freeing up 100 miles of river to native trout that previously were blocked. Unlike large-scale dam removals that...
Boston says ‘If Pittsburgh can have self-driving cars, so can we!’ (in several years)
The city of Boston says i will launch a "collaboration that will include a year-long program focused on creating policy recommendations and supporting on-street testing of autonomous vehicles "to advance the safety, access and sustainability goals identified by the...
Return to the Concord Monitor