Sci/tech tidbits in and around New Hampshire
If you like rabid opposition, talk about public fluoridation of water
I have been organizing and moderating monthly Science Cafe discussions for four years, including discussion of hot-button topics like climate change and vaccinations. But in all those years, only one session has gotten so heated that I had to tell people in the...
Do “car buffs” really dislike Tesla?
I'm not a car guy, in the sense of somebody who salivates over particular models or spends Saturdays working on my vehicle, although I can appreciate good engineering and design in a semi-detached manner, and I enjoy driving a stick shift for reasons I can't...
If I can’t be famous for accomplishments, perhaps I can be famous for former hair
This is the closest I will ever come to fame, I suspect: I am now a member of The Luxuriant Flowing, Former, or Facial Hair Club for Science Journalists run by the irrepressible Marc Abrahams, chief pooh-bah of the Ig Nobel awards and the Annals of Improbable...
At least 3 NH firms have gotten a drone exemption from FAA
According to a database compiled by the Center for the Study of the Drone at Bard College (love that name - "the drone" is much cooler than "drones" for some reason), three groups in New Hampshire have received an exemption from the FAA to fly drones: JS Photography...
Vermont faces a problem with large-scale composting: It’s hard not to make it stink
Vermont is a leader in large-scale composting and has mandated that virtually all food waste must stop going to landfills by 2020. But it's finding that large-scale composting has some nasal complications. As Seven Days reports: The stink at the compost facility on...
MIT may use MOOCs as an admission test for master’s programs
The Chronicle for Higher Education reports that MIT is proposing to use its own free open online courses as a filter to sort through all the people who want to be in master's programs there. (Story is here) Students who do well in a series of free online courses and a...
A new way to fight Lyme disease: Inject us directly with antibodies
Vaccines work like this: We're injected with controlled doses of disease-causing microbes, either dead or live, and our system creates antibodies to fight the disease. Those antibodies linger in our bloodstream so when we encounter the microbes later on, we're ready...
A floating upside-down cup, 80 feet across
In the days before natural gas was piped into communities, gas lighting and heating used "manufactured gas" - made by burning and processing coal, and sometimes oil. Most communities had their own Manufactured Gas Plant, because it wasn't easily transported in the...
The most depressing leaf-peeping article you’ll read – I mean hear – today
Somebody online called my Monitor column this week, which laments the speed at which climate change is happening, the most depressing leaf-peeping article they'd ever seen. So Pete Biello and I brought it to NH Public Radio in our weekly GraniteGeek chat. Fall is...
In Vermont, even some wind-loving utilities say “enough wind power for the moment”
Seven Days, a statewide independent newspaper in Vermont, reports that even Green Mountain Power, which is about as crunchy-granola as a major electric utility gets, thinks it has enough large-scale wind power for the moment. (Story is here) The state's largest...
Return to the Concord Monitor