Sci/tech tidbits in and around New Hampshire
Turning a gravel pit into a hydroponics greenhouse; does that make sense?
There's a debate about how much sense it makes to grow crops indoors: It allows you to create food in places that may not be otherwise of use, and grow food closer to urban areas where people are - which is good - but it requires energy to light and energy to build...
The endlessly fascinating falcon webcam
I can't get enough of the New Hampshire Audubon peregrine falcon webcam. Great video, from two perspectives. The four babies are growing up; they're currently in their awkward preteen phase, their white fluff being replaced by black feathers. It's really ugly; the...
What is This Thing Called Math?
Next week is a packed one for Science Cafe in New Hampshire - there's a special discussion in Laconia on Monday about opioid abuse, and Science Cafe Concord on Tuesday discussion the science of brewing. And then on Wednesday, I'm part of something different, a wicked...
Does rooftop solar (a) help, (b) hurt or (c) not affect home sales?
UPDATE: Fannie Mae offers very low cost financing for new PV on homes. My Monitor column today ponders the effect that rooftop solar has on buying and selling houses. It's mostly anecdotal because there isn't good data yet, especially not for New Hampshire, but you've...
”Superbug” resistant to all – all – antibiotics makes it to the U.S.
UPDATE: Local hospitals are on the alert. Forget politics and crime and even the Golden State Warriors' dilemma. The biggest news yesterday was the discovery in the U.S. of bacteria carrying the gene that makes them resistant to all antiboitics. As Boston Globe's...
I used ‘wetware’ in a story about the electric grid because I wanted to
UPDATE: On Twitter, Rudy Rucker politely told me I used the word all wrong. This is his definition. As anybody who works for a living knows, sometimes you have to indulge yourself. So I decided to use "wetware" in a story lede that had nothing whatsoever to do with...
The herring run on the Merrimack River is the best in two decades – but why?
Herring and/or alewife, which like salmon is an anadromous species (spawn in fresh water, live in salt water), are returning to the Merrimack River this year in numbers not seen since the early 1990s. Nobody knows why, just as we're not sure why the numbers crashed in...
It’s impossible not to smile when you see a picture of a pig’s snout
Go read the latest installment of Elodie Reed's ongoing tale in the life of a pig, if only so you can smile at her photo of Pink 2.0's muddy snout. Any excuse to see a picture of a pig's snout is a good excuse. The series is titled "From Piglet to Porkchop so things...
The slow, maybe not so slow, death of the stick shift
Recently a colleague talked about going hiking in the White Mountains and absent-mindedly leaving his keys in his car at a pretty busy parking lot. When he came back down at the end of the day, the unlocked car was sitting there with the keys visible on the front...
NH sees first loon death from avian malaria – but how did we know?
Aubudon has a good story about "bird CSI" and how forensic necropsy work identified the cause of death for the first New Hampshire loon to succumb to avian malaria. (Read it here) It's an interesting blow-by-blow account of how a pathologist figures out what has...
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