Sci/tech tidbits in and around New Hampshire
Non-hydropower renewable energy is almost 10% of US electricity production
In the first half of 2016, renewable energy other than hydropower - meaning wind power, solar power (including distributed, rooftop stuff), geothermal and biomass - produced a whopping 9.2 percent of all U.S. electricity production. That's not chicken feed, folks. And...
Rabies vaccine scattered around the north woods, so don’t eat funny-looking packets
We don't think about rabies much in this country, but it's out there. The disease tends to pass through wild populations of animals in waves, mostly commonly affecting foxes, raccoons, skunks and bats. On the East Coast, as is shown by this CDC map, raccoons are the...
Granite Geek on the air: Riding the RGGI roundabout
My weekly chat with Peter Biello at NHPR discussed the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, which turned 10 this month (depending on what year you choose for its start). You can listen to it here, or read my Monitor column on the topic (complete with Archie comics...
Among the plants proudly on display at the Oregon State Fair: Cannabis
In my lifetime, several astonishing things have happened that I never would have predicted as a child: The collapse of communism, the end of public smoking in the US, the fall in global birth rates. Here's another one: Among the prize-winning tomatoes and carrots and...
Why are the White Mountains a national forest, not a national park – and does it matter?
Today's the centennial of the National Park Service, which is one of the great things that America has accomplished (we basically got the idea going and plenty of other countries, thankfully, have followed suit). The Monitor has an interesting localizer - a story that...
To make cow manure less dangerous to waters, spin it in a centrifuge (huh?)
Manure contains phosphorus, which can prompt algae blooms if too much gets into water supplies, so places such as dairy farms are anxious to separate out the phosphorus before spreading their farm waste as fertilizer. One way to do that is with a...
Science Cafe
Science Cafe NH is returning in September after our summer hiatus. The topic in both Nashua (Wed., Sept. 7) and Concord (Tuesday, Sept. 20) will be "Coping with Climate Change." What are people, businesses, organizations and governments in New Hampshire doing to...
Like to play chess but hate to stoop over a table, or strain to peer above it?
"There are markets and there are niche markets, and then there’s the market being pursued by Right Height, a New Hampshire firm developing an adjustable-height table aimed just at chess players." That's the start of a piece I wrote in the Monitor on Saturday about a...
A public makerspace in a middle school
In what I believe is a first in New Hampshire and a rarity overall, Amherst, a well-off town just west of Nashua, has opened a public makerspace in its Middle School. It's being run under the auspices of the town recreation department, which is cool, and is available...
Boston area firms are moving fast on using CRISPR to make products
The Globe has a story about a trio of Cambridge, Mass.firms moving fast to develop and commercialize drugs and biotech products using CRISPR, the gene-editing tool (including one company called CRISPR, which gets the bulk of the coverage because it is parterning with...
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