Sci/tech tidbits in and around New Hampshire

Solar installs are growing in NH
A solar company called Ohm Analytics does a lot of number crunching. Above is their analysis of New Hampshire solar permits. We're coming off a slow start but finally speeding up. This is part of a national trend, as Canary Media reports. Here's their national chart:...
92% of NH (including my family) speaks only English
New Hampshire is pretty homogeneous but it's not completely a bunch of English-speaking white folks. The New Hampshire Center for Justice and Equity summarized our bilingual status: Roughly 8% of the state’s population (roughly 103,500 people) speak a language other...
Not-total-despair counts as optimism when it comes to combating anti-vax errors
I went to a vaccine conference at Dartmouth last week to learn more about the most depressing piece of research I’ve ever encountered. Amazingly, I came away a tiny bit more optimistic. The ongoing research by Brendan Nyhan, a professor of government at Dartmouth...
Water-temperature lawsuit against Bow plant is rejected
A federal judge has rejected a lawsuit saying that the Merrimack Station coal-fired power plant in Bow was releasing too much hot water into the Merrimack River, violating its operating permit. The ruling by Judge Joseph Laplante is very long – 86 pages...
UNH researchers find big clue about new dog illness
A lot of work is going into understanding that new respiratory illness in dogs. UNH News services reports a partial breakthrough at that school: The UNH researchers identified a small portion of the genome of a previously uncharacterized bacteria that may be causing...
Maine’s embrace of heat pumps continues
One of the pleasant surprises for creating a low-carbon economy has been the way Maine households have embraced electric heat pumps, switching away from the nasty No. 2 fuel oil that is so common in Maine (and New Hampshire). Annie Ropeik (a name many will remember...
NH patents through Dec. 10
(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 Dec. 10. *** Leveraging a Virtual Router to Bridge Between an Underlay and...
A surprise: Chestnut Foundation says ‘no’ to GMO tree
The saga over the genetically modified American chestnut tree just got more complicated. The American Chestnut Foundation, the leading group that has been trying to resurrect the iconic species through cross-breeding, has never been crazy about the genetically...

Clean Energy NH is taking a very NH-ish tack in fight over net metering
The advocacy group Clean Energy New Hampshire has launched a new campaign to raise awareness about attempts to roll back the state's rules on net metering, the process that pays rooftop solar for excess power. Obviously they took the state motto to heart because the...
People are moving to Maine and NH, according to Atlas Van Lines
Atlas van Lines, a national moving company based in Indiana, said Maine was the state that had the most inbound-vs.-outbound moves this year. New Hampshire was No. 3. I spotted this from this Mainebiz article, which notes that other moving companies ranked the two...