Sci/tech tidbits in and around New Hampshire
Like all things fractal, the NH coastline is hard to measure – and it gets more complicated than that
My Monitor column today looks at why some sources say New Hampshire's ocean coastline is 18 miles long, some say it's 13 miles, some say it's 235 miles, and why people who know how to pronounce Benoit Mandelbrot say the whole discussion is pretty arbitrary. You can...
Carbon nanotube cables, hockey boot & a ‘life-extension agent’ – recent NH patents
Some recent patents issued in New Hampshire, from Targeted News Service: Standex International of Salem has been assigned a patent (9,398,645) developed by Terry Gray of McKinney, Texas, for “current detecting and switching apparatus.” The patent application was filed...
Older workers grew up with lousy tech, so they handle work problems better
Take THAT you crummy digital-native millenials: A survey says that older workers use more and different types of technology in the workplace than those darn kids who won't get off my lawn, and also find it less stressful. From the story by CIO.com: Cloud storage...
Clash of desirables: Cleaner water vs. fighting invasive fish
AP reports (here) that Vermont is worried that stricter EPA limits on a chemical called TFM in drinking water will hurt the fight against the invasive sea lamprey. Fishing enthusiasts (are) worried that scaling back on the use of TFM could cause lamprey to boom and...
Helicopter firm tests drone for power grid inspection
Yes, that was a drone over downtown Nashua yesterday, reports the Nashua Telegraph: Pembroke-based JBI Helicopter, which provides helicopter service for Eversource in New Hampshire to make regularly scheduled inspection flights, brought one of its unmanned aerial...
Calculus is the biggest filter keeping women out of science
You can make a reasonable argument that the development of calculus in the 17th century - giving us the ability to quantify rates of change for all natural processes - marked the beginning of the modern world. Almost nothing in the industrialized economy would have...
Pub installs Faraday cage to block phone signals
And from East Sussex, south of London, comes the latest "mobile phones are ruining life" event - a landlord is trying to block phone signals by creating a Faraday cage around the bar. He has installed metal mesh in the walls and ceiling of the bar which absorbs and...
Drones over Nashua!
Eversource says the FAA has given it permission to use a drone to inspect a substation and systems in downtown Nashua, around Bridge Street. This seems incredibly sensible - quiet and no less safe than doing it with a helicopter, certainly. I suspect that Eversource...
Riding a bicycle while pulling a 40-pound dog in a trailer
Occasionally on my commute I pass a guy riding a bike along a 50 mph two-lane road while pulling a dog in a trailer. News gets slow in summertime and any story is a good story, so a couple weeks ago I pulled over to the side of the road at the top of a hill, wrote...
As software sneaks into network switches and controllers, UNH IOL keeps up
My Monitor column today talks about how the InterOperability Lab at UNH has launched a new consortium to deal with Software-Defined Networks, as "software eats the world" moves into the hardware keeping the internet internet-ish. You can read my prose poetry...
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