Sci/tech tidbits in and around New Hampshire
US infant mortality rates falls to record low
The Centers for Disease Control reports that in 2014, "The infant mortality rate decreased 2.3% to a historic low of 582.1 infant deaths per 100,000 live births." That rate is relatively high for a rich country like the U.S. (Canada and the UK both have infant...
Could somebody create a mutant bacteria with a DIY set?
The ability of the technology known as CRISPR (actually CRISPR/Ca9, but who's counting?) to edit genomes of living things grows more astonishing each day. There are lots of positives to this, notably relatively cheap and accessible gene therapy, but there are...
Best sentence I’ve read in a while is …
The best sentence I've read in a while is: "Birds can cause insulator flashovers due to their long streams of stringy, conductive and semi-liquid excrement." I just had to share.* I'm working on a follow-up to the a 13,000-customer outage this weekend caused by a hawk...
Doctors over-prescribe antibiotics because we aren’t happy if they don’t
Resistance to antibiotics is a big problem, and it's satisfying to blame others - like Big Agriculture, which doles out low doses to animals as a way to increase weight gain, despite the fact that it harms society. Resistances is scary and getting scarier: A bacteria...
Vermont utility to offer home storage batteries to customers
Green Mountain Power, the Vermont utility that has received national attention for its very Vermont-ish approach to producing and distributing electricity, has taken another interesting step: It is partnering with Tesla to offer home storage batteries for...
Kiwi fruit – savior or menace? NHPR podcast wants to know
The hardy kiwi is a variety of the small green fruit that a UNH professor thinks could be a new cash crop for the North Country, if it gets a little more domesticated through breeding. But as is reported in the first episode of a new N.H. Public Radio podcast called...
Is this a funny word? Let me get my calculator and see …
Quartz has a post about an attempt to mathematically determine how funny a word is. You can read it here, but be warned: The math is wrong, because it thinks the nonsense word "finglam" is funny. It's not funny.
With pine scale set to arrive, it makes sense to cut down the trees while they’re still healthy
The Union-Leader has a good story today (read it here) about Manchester Water Works harvesting red pine trees in watershed land it owns because red pine scale is on the way and will probably kill the trees. Manchester Water Works plans to remove stands of red pine...
West Coast adelgid-eating insects eyed to control our hemlock adelgids
Northern Woodlands is an excellent quarterly magazine from the Center for Northern Woodlands Education in Vermont. It's a terrific mix of touchy-feely outdoorsy stuff, science reporting on environmental, outdoors, wildlife and other issues, and information about the...
Edward Snowden to do a live feed from Russia for Manchester gathering of Free Staters
New Hampshire Liberty Forum, an annual gathering of Free Staters and like-minded folks, says the world's most famous whistleblower, Edward Snowden, is going to be a keynote speaker at the February meeting in Manchester - which is very cool, regardless of your opinion...
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