Sci/tech tidbits in and around New Hampshire
Don’t toss those oyster shells – or, rather, toss them in Great Bay
Hundreds and hundreds of pounds of old oyster shells are collected from restaurants around New Hampshire each week and eventually placed into Great Bay, the huge tidal estuary that swings west of Portsmouth, to create a substrate for new oysters to grow. It's part of...
In Maine, they’re hunting for a lost, historic sundial (yes, sundial)
The Portland Press-Herald has an interesting story today about a hunt in that city for a lost sundial of unusual design: They were not looking for just any sundial, but a new and improved version patented by scientist and inventor Albert Cushing Crehore in 1905....
Doctors, like astronomers, are leery about outdoor LED lights
I wrote this week about how astronomers aren't crazy about outdoor LED lights because they are more effective than sodium or incandescent light at interfering with our night vision. Doctors have some of the same concerns, as CNN reports in this good piece. Doctors are...
Alternative (“complementary”) medicine is big business: $30 billion a year in U.S.
A new report from the National Health Statistics, based on a 2012 national survey, reflects what a massive business alternative/complementary medicine has become in the U.S.: An estimated 59 million persons aged 4 years and over had at least one expenditure for some...
LEDs are awesome … unless you want to look at the stars
We’re all familiar with the phrase “It’s an ill wind that blows no good,” the optimistic belief that you can find silver linings in all but the worst of events. Unfortunately, the less-cheerful antithesis – “It’s a rare wind that blows no ill” – is also...
I got to use the word ‘sinusoidal’ in a story – and it’s about rumble strips
Rumble strips, those patterns of grooves cut into the side of or center trip of roads to alert drivers wandering out of their lanes, aren't exactly exciting technology. Or so I thought before writing a story about them for the Monitor this weekend, which includes my...
As ticks thrive in warmer winters, moose get sicker and sicker
New Hampshire is celebrating the lottery for its annual moose hunt, but I suspect there soon won't be any hunt because we won't have enough moose: The mortality rate of moose calves in New Hampshire this winter was a staggering 80 percent, due mostly to a warm winter...
Coyotes up, so fishers down, so porcupines up. (Nature is complicated)
Dave Anderson, the smooth-talking host of NHPR's "Something Wild" segments (who looks nothing like his voice - he has much more of the senior biker-dude vibe) has an interesting take on why there seem to be so many porcupines around today. He thinks the increase in...
New Hampshire’s own ‘Spam King’ – we know him as a Seacoast DJ – sentenced for phishing
Sanford Wallace was one of the early people who were famously bad on the Internet, by creating an email spam network in the late 1990s that earned him the name "Spam King" a.k.a. Spamford Wallace. But on the New Hampshire Seacoast, he was known for co-owning a bar...
Majority of engineering degrees at Dartmouth went to women – first time in the U.S. (maybe)
Dartmouth has an unusual engineering degree system - you get a BA in engineering, no majors/specialties unless you go to a 5th year - but even so, it's surprising that a majority (54%) of the 119 engineering BA's given out this year went to women. The school says this...
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