Sci/tech tidbits in and around New Hampshire
Supreme Court considers demand response – wait, don’t go: It’s actually interesting and important!
One of the problems with journalism is that important stuff is often boring. A perfect example is the way New Hampshire is considering new rules for the state Site Evaluation Committee. It will have huge repercussions about the existence and location of electric...
Even if NH bats rebound from white nose syndrome, it’ll take “hundreds of years”
NHPR's weekly Something Wild segment looks at white-nose syndrome, which has devastated bats throughout the Northeast, including New Hampshire. (I haven't seen a bat in my barn for more than five years.) You can listen to it here. As I've noted here in the past, there...
Killing cats – lots of cats – to save wildlife
A couple of years ago, Science Cafe New Hampshire tackled the subject of the damage that cats do to wildlife. They do a lot of damage - cats are awesome hunters - and the message was "cat owners, keep your cats indoors". We didn't go much into the subject of feral, or...
What will rising seas do to Seabrook Station? Drown it, fears this group
Interactive maps showing the effect of sea-level rise on coastal areas have been around a while - they're pretty easy to create if you've got the right tools, thanks to detailed topographic data - so the release of a new one by Climate Central isn't a big deal....
GraniteGeek on the radio: The screw thread edition
My weekly chat with Peter Biello of NH Public Radio covered, as usual, my Monitor column - which as you'll recall from a posting yesterday concerned a New Hampshire inventor who claims he has greatly improved on standard screw-thread design, and is trying to establish...
A tool library – like a makerspace, but you do your making at home
Portland, Maine, has a Tool Library, which is great idea for urban areas where apartments don't have much room. There's a piece about it in today's Portland Press-Herald (right here) - it sounds like a makerspace where you do the making elsewhere and with an emphasis...
How does Portsmouth Naval Shipyard address network security?
The UNH Interoperability Lab is holding a "cybersecurity" forum on Oct. 20 that looks interesting for folks with more knowledge than me, featuring Keith McVey, Cybersecurity Analyst at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard. Now there's a place which has some interesting...
Feds crack down on drones flying near disaster sites, especially wildfires
There have been somewhere around a dozen cases this summer of water-carrying aircraft having to turn back from a wildfire scene because a personal drone was flying nearby, filming it. U.S. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire has sponsored a bill that would make such...
Coal-fired power plant in Bow gets indirect boost: Plymouth Nuclear Plant to shut
The troubled Plymouth Nuclear Power Station on Boston's South Shore is going to close, its owner, Entergy said Tuesday. This isn't entirely a surprise, since the plant was facing a big safety-upgrade bill, but it puts more strain on New England's power grid by...
Chinese Nobel in medicine had nothing to do with traditional Chinese medicine
Excellent interview in the New York Times about the Nobel Prize in Medicine given to Prof. Tu Youyou concerning malaria. (Read the whole thing here.) Tu based her work on materials that were found by studying the pharmacopoeia* of traditional Chinese medicine, which...
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