Sci/tech tidbits in and around New Hampshire
Small Rumney manufacturer is a distributed-computing citizen-science champ
I just wrote a profile of Stonewall Cable, a small-ish (about 70 people) firm in the North Country town of Rumney, N.H., which makes specialty broadcasting and data cables for military and electronics applications - including cables being used by broadcasters in the...
Dartmouth professor chases thin-film solar power & energy storage
Dartmouth News Department has a piece (see it here) about Thayer School of Engineering Professor Jifeng Liu, whose research includes efforts to make thin-film solar panels, which has long been a goal for better or cheaper solar power. His solar cell materials research...
Venezuela’s power crisis shows that renewables alone are not enough (yet)
Wired.com has a really interesting piece (here) about the energy crisis in Venezuela. Government incompetence has caused massive blackouts all across the country, but the piece argues that over-reliance on hydropower (now suffering from a huge drought) and other...
The 26,000-or-so acre private hunting park in N.H. – complete with feral swine!
NHPR's Sam Evans-Brown did a show about Corbin Park, aka Blue Mountain Forest Association, a roughly 25,000-acre private hunting club in the Upper Valley of New Hampshire (it occupies more than half the town of Croydon, and that's just part of it). It has a mere 30...
Power forecast shows big growth of New England solar, but also its big weakness
In New England, there is so much "behind-the-meter" solar power that the maximum output is equivalent to Seabrook Station nuclear power plant - except when we really need it, that is. At that point, two thirds goes away. This is the exciting-yet-sobering conclusion...
In climate change, reforestation has a … (what’s the opposite of “silver lining”?)
Reforestation is good for fighting change because trees absorb CO2, above and beyond the other environmental goodness they produce, but ... (there's always a "but" ) ... new work from Elizabeth Burakowski, a postdoctoral research associate at UNH, shows one...
Internet awesomeness redux: Debunking earthquakes
When a couple of other reporters in the newsroom swore that they felt a small earthquake, I went to the Weston Observatory's Real-time Earthquake Monitor and was able to report that, alas, no such luck. It's the nearby bridge construction again.
Reporting this made me cry “the claw, the claw!” like the Martians in ‘Toy Story’
Wouldn't you love to operate a 5-ton claw that picks up 1.5 tons of trash at a single swoop? If only ... http://www.concordmonitor.com/waste-management-plant-penacook-burning-debris-1613572
Hugo Awards again “gamed” by group with political aim
For the second year running, one of the biggest prizes in science fiction and fantasy writing, the fan-voted Hugo Awards has been monopolized by nominations from Sad Puppies and Rabid Puppies, groups who campaign against what they see as the fields' dominance by...
How does a microbe help us make artificial snow?
Interesting piece and video by Science magazine about how "a specialized protein from a bacterium that jump-starts the freezing process when water is close to 0°C—a talent the microbes normally use to damage their host plants" is used to help snowmaking at ski areas....
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