Sci/tech tidbits in and around New Hampshire
World’s economy is growing but power carbon emissions aren’t – that’s very, very important
As the Washington Post notes in this article, the International Energy Agency says that global economic growth has become "decoupled" from greenhouse gas emissions from the use of energy (their largest source) - that is, the economy grew but emissions didn't....
Research that includes “guano” has to be interesting
I'm doing an interview soon for my next column, concerning DNA analysis of bat poop. With bats, however, you get to call it "guano", which sounds much more sophisticated. The above screenshot from the website of Jeff Foster's lab at UNH reflects an admirable focus. No...
New Hampshire has nation’s second-lowest rate of clicking online ads
According to AdRoll, an ad-tech company that counts 25,000 advertisers and reaches 1 billion users every quarter, New Hampshire and Maine have the second-lowest average "click-through" rate on online ads in the country. Only Utah is lower. The data, as I found in this...
Tomorrow: Zika virus is the topic at Science Cafe in Nashua
Tomorrow night (March 16) Science Cafe Nashua will be talking about Zika, the mosquito-borne virus and related disease, and how New Hampshire should see this threat, plan for its possible arrival and what we should know about the way global changes are impacting...
90th anniversary of the first liquid-fuel rocket launch, on a Mass. farm
Ninety years ago today, Robert Goddard launched the first liquid-fueled rocket from a farm owned by a cousin near Worcester, Mass. (He was born in Worcester and Worcester Polytechnic Institute.) Today that field is the Pakachoag Golf Course, and I bet the jokes about...
What is it about pi, anyway? Why don’t we celebrate e?
Today, as you probably know, is the pi-est of pi days in American: 3.14.16, or pi rounded to four decimal points. I say in America because much of the world writes dates as day-month-year instead of month-day-year, so for them it's 14.3.16 - not too exciting. (Bonus...
In Rhode Island, National Grid creates a solar-power shopping site
This spring, National Grid will launch a new online marketplace that allows customers in Rhode Island to shop for solar and receive an incentive for improving energy efficiency at the same time. That's the word from GreentechMedia (article is here): Customers who go...
Decline of carbon-based life forms, part XVIII: Computer wins at Go
Google's AI defeated the world's champion in the east Asian board game of Go. It beat him pretty soundly, too, and hehas a rank of 9 Dan, which is mind-bogglingly high. "Deep learning is killing every problem in AI." Humanity is doomed. Go is a great game; more...
Miss Science Cafe about CRISPR? Watch the video
ConcordTV, the city's community channel, has uploaded an edited, half-hour version of the most recent Science Cafe Concord, discussing CRISPR and the revolution in gene editing. You can check it out here. Don't forget, the next Science Cafe NH in Nashua will discuss...
We won’t see a total eclipse for another decade
Years ago I was in Tennessee when a total solar eclipse happened. It was a fascinating and yet unsettling thing to observe. You can understand how pre-technical societies freaked out over eclipses, a fact that Christopher Columbus famously used to his advantage with a...
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