Sci/tech tidbits in and around New Hampshire
A.I. helped kill coding boot-camp bought by SNHU
Kenzie Academy, an online boot-camp-style school for coding that was built to disrupt the stodgy old college model, has been disrupted by the next iteration of change in the field: A.I. Generative models like ChatGPT are pretty good at coding, at least superficially,...
Vermont utility: You get a battery, you get a battery – everybody gets a battery!
Vermont's statewide utility Green Mountain Power has been given permission to life the cap on its home-battery program, reports Canary Media. Customers who opt for the Powerwall pay the utility $55 per month for use of the battery, with no money down. The payments...
For climate, “laissez-faire” is “laissez-casser” (let it break)
CleanTechnica is a well-respected news site that focuses on energy and climate. It used to have much of a Tesla fancruft but has gotten much more balanced. It runs occasional pieces by outsiders and today it's got one titled "Climate—& A Cautionary Tale of Three...
Can a ‘shark tank’ incubator be touchy-feely? Healthcare sure hopes so
When it comes to medical breakthroughs, my mind has always taken a techno-futuristic turn, as you would expect from the name of this column. We need swallowable robot pills! 3D-printed human tissue! Manipulated DNA! Then everything will be better. This approach is...
Museums wrestle with their collections’ past, and so do I
In 1929, American writers Willie and Katie Seabrook took time off from palling around with Ernest Hemingway in France to visit West Africa, where they gathered material for his travel book and her children’s books. While they were being escorted by officials from what...
Fighting Facebook is a long process, even when the Supreme Court supports you
Wondering what it’s like to face off with a tech monopoly? Look no further than the least inconspicuous storefront in downtown Concord. Even though Emmett Soldati, owner of the Teatotaller cafe on North Main Street, won a surprise victory in front of the state Supreme...
N.H. police department celebrates its UFO role
The Exeter Police Department has created a patch commemorates the day 18-year-old Norman Muscarello reported a UFO sighting behind a barn in nearby Kensington to Exeter Police in 1965. This has become known to UFO fans as the "Exeter incident" and is often cited as...
Making an old, small hydro dam center of a microgrid – maybe
A bunch of University of Vermont students are trying to resurrect an old dam that was swamped by Hurricane Irene and make it the hydropower centerpiece of a local microgrid. Interesting project - details from the UVM magazine are here. Other groups of engineering...
N.H. patents through Aug. 20
(Links to each patent can be found here, using the patent number or inventor’s name.) By Targeted News Service WASHINGTON – The following federal patents were assigned in New Hampshire through Aug. 20. *** Shoe COLE HAAN LLC, Greenland, New Hampshire has been assigned...
Dartmouth is part of research for nasal spray COVID vaccine
(Funny how things come in batches. Often the newsletter is all climate-tech but this week it's COVID-o-rama) From Dartmouth Health: In collaboration with the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and Belgium-based viral vector manufacturer Exothera, a team of...
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